Plotting a Misogynistic Path to Christian Dior's Poison

Abstract

Plotting a Misogynistic Path to Christian Dior's Poison1 Is perfume superfluous? No, it is a necessary emotion. A beneficial pleasure. From the simple flower crushed in your hand to the most sophisticated fragrance. Dior is attentive to all these sensations. For him, perfume is also matter for reflection. It unlocks the arcane secrets of our collective unconscious, of our memory. A perfume helps us to reveal ourselves; it helps us remember who we are or who we want to be. And the variations are infinite, matching our moods or the color of the times.... Its precious alchemy contains a piece of our dreams, our desires and our present reality. A perfume makes us a part of our era, our moment, its sensitivities, its values and its search for new values. Parfums Christian Dior2 When I first saw an advertisement for Poison about ten years ago, I immediately asked myself: What woman would want to be considered in any way toxic? In search of an answer to this question, I followed a path that lead me into the depths of folklore and cultural history. Now, a decade later, I believe that a figure that has come to be known as the poisonous damsel belongs to the lesser known, more deeply embedded images of women that combine beauty with passivity, danger, sexuality, and ultimately, death. These juxtapositions can evoke rejection and attraction. Inherent in the ambiguity of these responses are elements of disregard, fear, and hatred. When scholars undertake the task of tracing and analyzing the perennial danger that women pose throughout history and across cultures, they invariably ground their studies in an amalgam of misogynistic social practice and cultural lore. An obvious illustration of the perceived innate danger of women, and how men responded to it, is found in the folklore of menstruation. In cultural practice throughout the ages and across continents, woman is viewed not only as impure but also as dangerous on the day she begins menstruating. There are a multitude of social conventions, from those of the Dakota Indians to the biblical Hebrews, surrounding the menstruating woman.3Social practice associated with menstruation is preserved in folklore attributing opposing magical qualities to menstrual blood and, by implication, menstruating women. In Russian lore, for example, menstrual blood is implemented as a curative for warts and birthmarks, whereas the lore of Dakota, Siberian, and Zulu warriors forbids menstruating women from touching their weapons before battle, unless they wish to risk certain defeat (Hays, 1964:44-46) . Menstruation is but one glaring example of an almost universally misogynistic response to women's bodily functions. In the case of the poisonous damsel, however, that which makes a young woman dangerous is not born but bred; not natural, but acquired. male response to the danger is a combination of fascination and fear. first mention of a poisonous young woman relevant to this discussion appears in Visakhadatta's ancient Indian political drama The Minister's Seal (Mudra-rakshasa) (Buitenen 1968:188-271). narrative is included in Types of the Folktale (Aarne and Thompson 1961) as Type 507C ( Serpent Maiden) in which the poison damsel is a woman nourished on poison so that she becomes fatal to her husbands. I am interested above all in the variant of this tale type that was known in India as early as the fifth century, wherein a girl is intentionally fed deleterious plants or other poisons from infancy, imbuing her with the power to cause death in those men who touch her or have sexual intercourse with her (motif F 582) . Another example of the use of a poisonous damsel in Indian literature, this time for the destruction of an enemy, appears in an early medieval collection of three hundred and fifty tales, stories, fables, and anecdotes entitled Katha Sarit Sagara or Ocean of the Streams Of Story (Tawney, 1968:148-149). An almost perfect antidote to the Indian poison maiden as she appears in The Minister's Seal and Katha Sarit Sagara is the medicine-girl described in the seventh-century Siksha-Samuccaya: A Compendium of Buddist Doctrine: After perfecting all medicines, he made the shape of a girl composed of a collection of all medicinal trees, pleasant, beautiful, well made and put together, well completed; she went to and fro, stood, sat down, slept. …