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Review of Ruskin's Mythic Queen: Gender Subversion in Victorian Culture
Review Author: Elizabeth Archer
Affiliation: University of Southern California
Ruskin's Mythic Queen is in turn a frustrating and a compelling read. Fresh and interesting; it focuses on the discourses of gender and an eclectic selection of classical myth, primarily Greek and Egyptian, in the works of a variety of nineteenth-century writers: three Victorian mythologists, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, D. G. Rossetti, and finally Ruskin himself. However, the approach to the material and the strength of the readings vary. The first half, which contains a theoretical overview of myth and feminist criticism as well the chapters covering the non-Ruskin material, is flawed by what seems to be a defensive presentation of the argument. The second half, on the other hand, is both narrower in scope and more complex in execution, and as such constitutes a worthy contribution to Ruskin studies.
Weltman's central thesis is that Victorian writers who used mythological discourse, in particular mythological figures such as goddesses and female monsters, either consciously or unconsciously undermined the supposedly rigid gender dichotomies of the nineteenth century. The female creatures that inhabit classical mythology, with the ambiguity of their physical forms and of their power over men and nature, do clearly pose a challenge to any simplistic conception of separate spheres and the subjection of "the frailer sex." Weltman's middle section, "Nineteenth-Century Mythmaking," is concerned primarily with supporting that one thesis across a wide variety of nineteenth-century texts, including the academic works of Max Muller, Andrew Lang, and Jane Ellen Harrison. The most interesting chapter covers the gender implications of the approaches to studying myth taken by these three major Victorian mythographers. But ultimately all the texts are used in the same way: each shows the troubling of gender dichotomies. In repetition, this thesis comes across as increasingly simplistic. Although for general readers it might prove illuminating, showing that the Victorians are more complex than our current stereotypes claim is no longer a particularly fresh academic argument.
An opportunity for a more complex argument seems possible in the early chapter on twentieth- century theory. However, Weltman mines that theory mainly as a source of recent examples of the continued use of female mythological characters to destabilize gender in the twentieth century, when she might, especially with Judith Butler's material, have found a methodology to give her readings of the Victorian texts more complexity and significance. This chapter on "Theories of Gender, Myth, and Discourse," which with the Introduction makes up the first section of the book and sets the stage for what is to come, reads as more a justification of the project as a whole than a preparation for it. This first section mounts a defense of mythological criticism, especially feminist mythological criticism, against those ready to dismiss such a topic or approach based on the perceived excesses of past feminist critics. This defensiveness, perhaps, prevents her from using this material in a more constructive way.
After the problems of the first two sections, the Ruskin section is a delight. In contrast to most of the writers covered in this book, Ruskin scholarship still needs a more complex understanding of his representation of gender. Ruskin is commonly understood as a rigid proponent of separate spheres ideology, the social understanding that women and men inhabit and reign over different areas of life. The first chapter in this section, "Be No More Housewives, but Queens" shows how Ruskin, even in his most canonical text, "Of Queens' Gardens," is pushing for the extension of the feminine or domestic sphere into the accepted masculine realm of commercial and, perhaps, political activity. This part of Weltman's book is a fine contribution to recent attempts in this vein. The next two chapters, "Gender and the Architectonics of Metaphor," which examines "Ethics of the Dust," and "Athena and the Feminization of Language," which considers "The Queen of the Air," make the argument that Ruskin's understanding of the feminine became even more radical, for his time, when he uses it to explore the nature of language and of the creative forces at work in art, architecture, and other constructive endeavors. These three chapters comprise a solid and thorough exploration of how complex and, at times, how contradictory, Ruskin's position on women really is.
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