Danni Chen's Blog 2: Woman's Natural Incapability in Science and Art

Woman’s Natural Incapability in Science and Art

According to a dominant educational theory in the Victorian era, women were naturally born with the brain that weighed five ounces less than a man’s brain on average. If they learned scientific ideas, their body would have spared extra energy in their brain, which would negatively affect their reproductive destiny, since the total energy within a human body is finite.[1] It seems that the brain and the reproductive organs are competing with energy within the female body. In other words, females could only take one into account. Otherwise, females would be at risk mentally and physically. Therefore, in most of the caricatures comic and writings at that time, educated females were depicted sickly or ugly. However, Pre-Raphaelite artists portrayed these beautiful intellectual women as sensuous temptresses. The reason of such portrayal may be these artists’ idea that women had limited energy, and thusthey required energy from outside by becoming sexual predatory after they had used much energy for study. Hence, Pre-Raphaelite artists made a connection between the female creativity and their sexuality. In other words, their intellectual ability might lead to unusual sexuality. Such idea about woman’s academic or artistic ability and sexual potency is also reflected by John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott (1888). As Eizabeth Prettejohn points out, this image of Lady Shalott can also be represented as a female artist who produces artworks (weave or embroidery), but is prohibited to study the nature of objects and create her own works based on her study.[2]

Another work depicting Lady Shallot by William Holman Hunt (Figure.1) shows the moment when this lady cannot help looking outside at the knight, Lancelot. She stops weaving and becomes angry and frustrated about her fate. At the same time, the web flies out; the mirror cracks; she cannot continue her work anymore. Prettejohn states that “her awakening sexuality destroys her creative power.”[3] She suggests that for female, sexuality may negatively affect their creativity. It is interesting to relate Prettejohn’s thought with the previous educational theory I mention above.  It seems that to some extent the story about the Lady of Shalott was under the influence of the idea about the relationship between brain and reproductively organ (or sexuality) in female body if the lady is regarded as an art maker. The Lady of Shalott was cursed, which made her not able to fulfill her sexuality and art creativity at the same time. However, in the poem of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the author never explained why the Lady was cursed or why she is incarcerated in the tower. It may relate to the Victorian educational theory that females were naturally incapable to have the same ability as males, so females belonged to the private sphere.

   Figure.1. William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott, 1905.

Bibliography

Prettejohn, Elizabeth. The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

2007.

Taylor, “Beverly Female Savants and the Erotics of Knowledge in Pre-Raphaelite Art.” In M.F.

Watson, ed., Collecting the Pre-Raphaelites: The Anglo-American Enchantment. London: Scholar, 1997, 122.

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[1] Beverly Taylor, “Female Savants and the Erotics of Knowledge in Pre-Raphaelite Art,” in M.F. Watson, ed., Collecting the Pre-Raphaelites: The Anglo-American Enchantment (London: Scholar, 1997) 122.

[2] Elizabeth Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (,Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press ,2007) 231.

[3]Prettejohn, Ths Art, 231.