The popular myth of the eternal woman
Conventional femininity is a complex of culturally designated passive qualities that reinforce and do not disturb man’s concept of what woman is: namely, that she should be modest, gentle, delicate, docile. The essentials of female femininity are beauty and sexuality but desirable femininity rests on the idea that a woman is also young and innocent as well as sensual, lustful, voluptuous, passionate in order that she is always desired. In this model, she is also the mother running the family and raising the children. Within the family she is a homebound housewife, a cook and a maid, doing the chores, a person with no public exposure. As a wife she is loving, caring, faithful, devoted to flattering and approving of her husband’s doings. Her love and her husband are central into her life. Woman’s social role is that of the non-demanding passive consumer, someone who does not question the patriarchal status-quo. She is characterised as the weak being that comes second as ‘the second sex’ [Beauvoir 1949]. In these terms, the eternal woman is neither business-like nor a money-maker. She is represented as an apolitical and marginal figure, someone underpaid, unemployed and deprived of power.
The eternal woman also fits into the ancient categories of good/bad girl. This opposition has hoary literary history. One part of this stereotype is reflected in the dichotomy between blonde and brunette: the blonde is presumed to be 'good as gold' - i.e. self-confident ; by contrast, the dark sultry siren is doomed everlastingly as a bad girl. The bad girl is also associated with the woman as a witch, mad or hysterical or a prostitute.
From a mythological perspective, this myth of an eternal woman has also been associated with nature, earth, darkness, negative, moon, water, fertility, mother goddess, life and death. Woman’s power to create life was not considered relevant for the mythological thinking needed to create art. In this text, I consider, however, the promotion of the woman’s abilities to create books, paintings, art objects, performances as well as babies as the main feature of our contemporary myth.
Copyright © : Iliyana Nedkova,1996-7
N.Paradoxa : Issue No.6, 1998