Idols of perversity
Subtitle: fantasies of feminine evil in fin-de-siècle culture
By: Bram Dijkstra.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1986
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 453
Subjects: Women in art; Sexism in art; Arts, Victorian
Description: In the years around 1900, an unprecedented attack on women erupted in virtually every aspect of culture: literary, artistic, scientific, and philosophic. Many of the anti-feminine platitudes that today still constrain women's potential were first formulated during this period, as intellectuals of every stripe throughout Europe and America banded together to picture women as static beings whose sole function was sexual and reproductive. This text explores the nature and development of turn-of-the-century misogyny in the works of hundreds of writers, artists, and scientists, including such figures as Zola, Strindberg, Wedekind, Henry James, Rossetti, Renoir, Maurois, Klimt, Darwin, and Spencer, not to mention a host of now-forgotten others.
Notes: Bibliography: p. [403]-424.
Includes index.