Towards androgyny : aspects of male and female in literature

The Resource Towards androgyny : aspects of male and female in literature
Label
Towards androgyny : aspects of male and female in literature
Title remainder
aspects of male and female in literature
Statement of responsibility
by Carolyn G. Heilbrun
Creator
Author
Subject
Language
eng
Summary
"Androgyny is not yet a very familiar term. Derived from the Greek andro (male) and gyn (female), it defines a condition in which the characteristics of the sexes, the human impulses expressed by men and women, are not rigidly defined. It suggests a spirit of reconciliation between the sexes, a full range of experience open to individuals who may, as women, be aggressive, as men, tender; a spectrum into which human beings fit themselves without regard to propriety or custom. And it is Carolyn Heilbrun's contention, in this bold, pioneering book, that the true sexual revolution consists in the acceptance and recognition of the androgynous principle as the basis of human attitudes. In our present definition of sexual roles, she points out, we are still the heirs of the Victorian age, and our present definitions of 'masculine' and 'feminine' are little more than unexamined, received ideas: by placing the 'masculine' emphasis on competitiveness and aggressiveness, we have gravely endangered human survival; while gentleness and lovingness are regarded 'feminine' and out of place among rulers, we can look forward to continued self-brutalization and perhaps even to self-destruction. So, Mrs Heilbrun argues, the achievement of a balance between the sexes is vital. The first part of her book traces what she calls the hidden river of androgyny, running silently and undetected beneath the earth. She finds evidence in myth and literature: the hints that mankind's earliest gods were female and that early societies were matriarchal; the celebration of the 'feminine' impulse in Greek drama; the re-entry of the 'feminine' principle as a civilising force into medieval literature, and the cult of Mary, mother of Jesus; the return of great female figures in the plays of Shakespeare and Racine. The second part concerns itself largely with the novel, 'a form astonishingly imbued with the ideal of androgyny', and analyses this ideal as it is revealed in Clarissa, Vanity Fair, Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter, the novels of George Eliot, George Meredith, Hardy, Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, and many others. The final section, too, is both challenging and revealing: a study of the Bloomsbury group (Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey and their circle)--'a window on the world of androgyny' and 'the first actual example of such a way of life in practice'. Not infrequently, as Mrs Heilbrun admits, the argument on behalf of androgyny sounds like a feminist cry. But if 'feminine' resounds throughout the book with the echoes of lost virtue, while 'masculine' thuds with the accusation of misused power, this, she insists, is a reflection of our current values. The very essence of her book is the belief that humanity requires both. Ideas move very rapidly when their time comes: the time has come for this book now. "--Jacket
Member of
Cataloging source
SUC
Dewey number
809/.933/53
Index
index present
LC call number
PN56.S52
LC item number
H4 1973b
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
  • dictionaries
  • bibliography

Context

Context of Towards androgyny : aspects of male and female in literature

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