Feminine Charm Research Articles

Beer and Tea: Harmony and Contradiction Among Two Unlikely Counterparts

This essay begins by examining the representations and interpretations of women and men in two sets of images: the Women's Institute Alternative Calendar and a television commercial for Guinness beer. Both of these compositions are exceptional in their own right, and have captured the imaginations of wide audiences. Taken together, the counterpointing of culture and nature, serenity and intensity, and feminine charm and virility creates a montage of images that both reflect and represent traditional forms of femininity and masculinity. This essay draws on a variety of sociological and interdisciplinary theoretical approaches, with an emphasis on the storied nature of lives, sexuality, and life change. C. Wright Mills declares that the sociological imagination is necessary in order “to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society” (Mills, 1959, p. 6). The author's aim in this essay, following through on Mills's idea, is to provide insight into the lives of earlier cohorts of women and a glimpse into how personal and social change comes about.

Restraining Order: The Imperialist Anti-Violence of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Restraining Order: The Imperialist Anti-Violence of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A dilemma on Orchid Island.

“Ah, Indian River country,” remarked Theodore Conrad as he drove the car rental southward to Vero Beach. “Our favorite vacation spot,” affirmed Elizabeth. “I was just thinking about a potential public health conundrum that might take place in this part of the world,” added Theodore. “Tell us about it,” pleaded Thaddeus and Alexandra from the back seat. “With pleasure….” At the wheel of his new silver Volvo sat Seymour Lavin. Sy and his new bride, Joyce, were headed south on US 1 to their new home in Orchid Island. They had just left the Blue Gull Marina in Sebastian, where they had enjoyed a lunch of charbroiled shrimp over endive with balsamic-based vinaigrette and a bottle of their favorite California Chardonnay. With the solitude provided by closed windows and the stereo featuring a Mozart concerto, Sy and Joyce each quietly contemplated the future. Sy had a new lease on life, a new bride and a new home. He had finally come to grips with the loss of Ruth, his first wife, and her painful battle with the ravages of metastatic breast carcinoma. For more than a year after Ruth’s passing in 1994, Sy had been severely depressed, seemingly lost without his soulmate and partner. He had been unable to concentrate on his successful real estate business in Chicago. He barely coped with life. However, his grief had been assuaged 18 months later when he met 31-year-old Joyce through a mutual friend. A physical therapist, Joyce was bright, vivacious and sensitive. Her attentiveness, engaging personality and feminine charms had restored Sy’s peace of mind, and he felt like a young man again. Sy and Joyce were married on December 15, 1996, and chose to spend their winter months at their new home on the shores of Orchid Island in central Florida. …

In the house of disillusion: Augusta Holmès and La Montague noire

Among surviving portraits of Augusta Holmès is a photograph taken towards the end of her life (Fig. 1). The setting is her home: possibly the main room, but more likely a study, since the picture is dominated by a grand piano at which the composer stands imperiously. Images such as this – emphasising professional zeal rather than feminine charm – were the exception in the representation of women composers at the end of the nineteenth century. A vase of flowers, a flowing gown and a recumbent posture would have been typical. In high-necked blouse and dark skirt, hair pulled back severely to reveal a large, pale face, Holmès is less alluring; but she is ready to compose. The image also engages with contemporary conventions of representing male composers. Within the photograph is another, a framed portrait on the piano, positioned so that it reproduces Holmès' features. Richard Wagner: same bushy cravat, same forbidding pose. Almost the same, but not quite.

Rosalind and the Nineteenth-Century Woman: Four Stage Interpretations

The nineteenth-century theatregoer in America and in England enjoyed a wonderful diversity of acting styles and roles among the actresses of the period. To be sure, it was an age of the womanly ideal, when playing Juliet appealed to every young actress. Perhaps too many aspired to the youthful, feminine charms of Juliet, for one disgusted New York critic complained that “40,000 American girls were doing the Balcony Scene that ought to be doing the family dishes.” Other roles such as Paulina, Galatea, and Parthenia thrived on the Victorian stage, male theatre critics applauding the feminine virtues of gentility and grace, loyalty, delicate humor, and occasional submissiveness. Interestingly, another sort of female role became extremely popular during this time: the breeches role.

Characterisation in Greek Tragedy

The editorial introduction to a Greek play will often include a section on the characters, in which their various traits are collected into a series of sketches. There may be sketches not only of the main characters but of minor, anonymous personages together with a sort of collective sketch of the chorus, and they are commonly made without fuss or discussion of critical theory. There has, of course, both here and in general books on the tragedians, always been room for differences of interpretation: as to whether, for example, Pentheus is moral or prurient. It is round such differences that discussion revolves, and the arguments have been heated enough. Why is the Aeschylean Agamemnon made to tread the purple carpet? Professor Thomson suggests that it is by reason of Clytemnestra's irresistible feminine charm. But since this charm, so far from being explicitly attested, is only an inference from three lines of dialogue; since the king has said a little earlier (in Thomson's own translation):Seek not to unman me with effeminateGraces and barbarous salaams agapeIn grovelling obeisance at my feet—from which any susceptibility to Clytemnestra's charm seems singularly absent; since, moreover, he has brought with him a concubine who is—of many chattels the elect flower,—one might be tempted to maintain that even if the charm is accepted as a help towards interpretation, there must be other reasons also for Agamemnon's acting as he does. Very well, you may say, modify the sketch to suit your taste.

Thoreau and Schopenhauer: An Imaginary Conversation

musing in the library of the famous Goethe. A group of young women saw him thus, and one of them sought to exercise her wit by asking, Is it alive? Goethe, overhearing the remark, rebuked it: That young man will eclipse us all, yet, he predicted -with a generosity not inseparable from genius. The youth who so prematurely preferred the pleasures of the intellect even when feminine charm competed for his attention, was Arthur Schopenhauer, unique individualist of his age in Europe, and intellectual affinity of his contemporary in America Henry Thoreau. There is no one with any mental warmth of his own but has felt on occasion that sociability is a doubtful virtue. Henry Thoreau always so considered it. On one occasion he permitted himself to be beguiled into attending a party and wasting part of his precious time in converse with some young ladies of Concord. Next day he confided to his Journal his opinion of soirees, reproaching himself with having mixed in such an uncongenial atmosphere. He did not care to try to converse where forty were talking at once, nor could he see any pleasure in chatting with a girl merely because her features were regular. In the philosophy and the character of these two thinkers, there are striking parallels. I can find no evi-