Continuing on from last week’s riff, is it possible that girls are more likely to make reading a social act rather than a solitary one?
One of the first questions that drew me to reading about the history of the novel in Western Europe, specifically the early novels of the 1600s and the rise of the salons, was how women swiftly organized themselves around literary pursuits as soon as they found one another and a shared venue for expression.
Here are some quick impressions from my own non-academic and entirely sporadic reading.
The Renaissance brought about a revival in learning, with an especial focus on classical literature. The Renaissance contributed not just new ideas, but a new paradigm—the idea that the world could be different. From monarch to middle class, the use of classical vocabulary gave you style points—meanwhile, the content of the classics led to extrapolations in various forms of writing about what the ideal world could be . . . which in turn led to ideas about what the ideal man could be. Of course this “man” was assumed to be literate, and Castiglione exhorted in his book of social climbing, The Courtier, “He must be of noble birth.”
But though the language of classical literature was male, guess who else was reading? With the spread of wealth came leisure time, and as women had been denied much involvement in seigniorial concerns, they turned to books. Women read, talked, penned reams of letters.
In mid-seventeenth century in France, woman’s written work became enormously popular: Madame Scudery, whose novels were not just romances, but long conversations and careful details about courtly behavior. A lot of those conversations were published separately in the latter part of the century as manners manuals. They were meant to depict an ideal of civilized life–but eager young women read them in hopes of emulating those up the ranks, to better their lives.
Meanwhile, Louis XIII’s court was so uncouth that a remarkable woman named Madame Rambouillet opened her house in 1618, and for three decades the elite of French literary society flocked to her salon, instead of the king’s court, to speak about refined love, and other polite subjects. She designed the ruelles, or alcoves, which were to become a standard of most salons; at first made so that the temperature of the room could be controlled, these intimate little partial rooms appealed so strongly that other hostesses raced to make their own.
The definition of public and private was changing. To be private, and intimate, among chosen people, was also to be exclusive. Madame du Deffand, a famous salonniere of the mid-18th Century, took eighteen months to design and furnish her place, to a very specific design. No detail was deemed too trivial; the buttercup yellow silk wallpaper in her entertainment rooms was copied by most wannabe salonnieres throughout Europe.
What did all this mean? The romance is tied up in the betterment of life—the happy ending if all live up to a standard. Unfortunately, the focus here was the betterment of an exclusive society, rather than the betterment of all. Or rather, the two things conflicted, which caused rifts among women publishing in the years before the Revolution. Not surprisingly aristos wanted to hold onto power and privilege, and women born lower down on the totem pole felt that civilization ought to benefit all.
During the patriarchal nineteenth century, there was one calling where women could hold their own with men: writing, and reading.
Later on I learned that in Japan, this phenomenon occurred even earlier; during the Heian period, roughly 800-1200 by Western count, it was the women of the court who inspired the flowering of literature by evolving new syllabaries, hiragana and katagana, which permitted vernacular Japanese to be written down in poetic and literary form.
It’s interesting to me, watching the remarkable organization of fanzine fandom (specifically fan fiction) over the past thirty years, done mostly by women. What’s going on with fanfic? A whole lot of stuff. Women writers exploring sexual questions is usually the first thing brought up (or mudball slung, post 50 Shades); but there is so much more to be found in the vast world of fanfiction. The very statement that “This is what I like in a story. Write it for me” is evidence of taking control of one’s art as well as a form of reading, writing, and social action.
And I see mostly women doing it. Fanfiction has not historically been reserved for women—a century ago, I believe, it was mostly men who penned Sherlock Holmes pastiche—but fanfiction does seem to be largely female, and definitely a social act. I find that so intriguing.
Just as a bit of an aside–I think boys today may be realizing more that reading can be a social activity–I know that my own reading son and his best friends, who are also readers, value tremendously the social interaction of it–the recommending and discussing, the games of pretend that come from the books, the drawings they inspire. And I wonder if the HarryPotter books may have helped set the stage for this–these are books that boys carry around at a very young age, to make social statements, and they are also books that evoke discussion and game playing outside the world of the printed page.
That is awesome about your son, and a good observation.
Women did develop and employ hiragana, but I believe it was monks that came up with katakana. Chinese characters were considered too masculine for women to learn, but it was definitely woman who had learned them who developed it and who wrote the great literature of the period.
Though I think that if we’re going to make parallels between women of such different times and places were going to have to talk a little bit about means of production. After years of being shut out of the apparatus of literature, women exploit opportunities in the system to create their own literature, which is both a mimesis and a resistance to the mainstream. Perhaps that’s why most fanfiction is TV oriented, though not perfect, there are many areas in fiction where women are in the mainstream, but in TV there is still a decent amount of androcentrism, and it’s really hard to break into – for anyone – inspiring more mimesis and resistance, fanfiction being an opportunity with nearly no barrier to entry.
These are excellent thoughts; alongside means of production we have to also talk about the rise of the middle class, and the appearance of leisure time as well as means, at least in Western Europe. There is an extremely early novel fragment, I think around Chaucer’s time, or the century previous, apparently written by a woman, in which an arguing couple change jobs. The man, having accused the woman of nothing but leisure time as he works all day in the fields. He’s just discovering how much invisible-to-him work inside the home is when the fragment ends.
Are women more likely to join book clubs than men? Hmmm.
In my own experience, yes. But I don’t know if my experience is trustworthy. But when I read letters, memoirs, etc, it always seems to me that women had book clubs while men had political gatherings. (Great generalization here.)
My brother in law, always an innovative trend setter, formed his own book club – at work! Guys n’ gals attended.
That’s cool–and at work, too! Nifty!
Insofar as reading is considered a social activity, as opposed to a political one (in the strictest sense) or a work-related one, then it makes sense that women were the guiding hands in literary salons, etc. as they controlled the more social aspects of life, esp. in the 17th and 18th centuries. Even now I think we’ll find that most book clubs are run by and attended by women. The difference now is that they’re not also attended by men.
Not? Or are? Are we seeing fewer mixings of genders with respect to literature?
Well, I think the boys I know are unusual, but they seem to read much the same thing and talk about it in much the same way and with girl readers. Few kids I speak to don’t have a ready answer for “What do you read for fun?”
Marine layer at my end hope it blows your way. Yesterday was awful!
Oh, I hope so, too. It’s miserable in here right now!
My experience has been that men and boys who read love finding out about new authors and books, although the shyer boys limit their comments to “I really liked that” and “Know anything else good like that?” I know a couple of geeky men who started a reading group through the local regional SF convention organization, and it hangs in there as a book club venue.
As for social reading, I enjoy observing reviews posted by men who are voracious readers. I have seen men who will deal with books clubs for business — as in, inviting writers in for their bookstores, or building Goodreads and LibraryThing presences because they are selling books. But it’s taken time to find men who just enjoy reading and talking about books.
I’m encouraged that boys are discovering the joy of talking about books. (I did my part, infecting my nephew early and often!)
Good work on the nephew front!
Those Parisian salons, both pre- and during the Revolution (the salons self-dissolved during the Terror), the Directoire, Consulate and Imperial eras, were equally in affect and effect political. It was the secular, non-Church — and non-royalist — aligned writing and research in all fields that the salons were subtly and not so subtly promoting — at least prior to the Consulate. Or, to reduce it to an aphorism attributed to the Prince of Salons, Talleyrand, “Women are politics.” Or, again, as Dena Goodman observes: “‘the literary public sphere was transformed into the political public.”
That is why the women who hosted salons mattered so much; they first began as political hostessing for their husbands. Good conversationalists and ‘celebrities’ attracted the right sort of people. The women who had that social gift of bringing the best and brightest — and most powerful and influential together, time after time, became politically influential themselves.
Moliere, in his play (translated) The Learned Ladies:
Our fathers had a saying which made good sense:
A woman’s polished her intelligence
Enough, they said, if she can pass the test
Of telling a pair of breeches from a vest.
Their wives read nothing, yet their lives were good;
Domestic lore was all they understood…
…But women scorn such modest arts of late;
They want to scribble and to cogitate…”
According to Joan B. Landes: Salonieres were a social force that abetted the integration of new individuals into the elite…Romantic love was used as the justification for these new arrangements, which challenged the old ways of custom and rank. In the process, however, women began to redefine nobility and virtue. Not birth but commerce, venality of office, and intrigue at court became the new coins of power. Women functioned as adjuncts, then, of a system of advancement for merit.
But these aristocrats had no intention of supporting deep (political) change that might remove their prestige and wealth. Quite different were the goals of middle class and below women, who produced the Jornal des Dames for a couple decades, before 1780.
Women of that class were not in the salons though.
Politics covered a great deal more than indicated by ‘no intention of losing one’s privileges.’
For instance: the force that pushed the French throne into backing the American War for Independence, and thus contributing hugely to further France’s economic chaos — which then helped open a path to France’s Revolution — came out of the salons.
Many aristocrats were deeply unhappy with the rigid three estates division of France. Even Talleyrand who remained a pure aristo all through his political career serving France (as he saw it). From early in his reading in history he felt France’s one man one rule Bourbon monarchy had to be replaced by a constitutional monarchy modeled on England’s, in order for France to survive. He concluded this before the Revolution, and even during his own exile from both France and England, in Philadelphia, he never wavered in that conclusion.
I agree about Talleyrand–he stuck to his vision all along. My reading of the salons was less political than about communication, though it was about all those things, including questioning the boundaries of privacy. (The fashion for ‘portraits’ lasted a century, after all.)
I also agree that the women who were politically motivated were not going to salons. Most of them would not have been welcome. The bourgeoise women who did want revolution were certainly not welcome.
I’m getting way off track here, but I suspect the simple way to track women’s political involvement previous to, and during the Revolution (up to and into the Terror) is to point out the career of Olympe de Gouges.
Of course too, the most significant political actions that came out of the salons was meeting the people who fill important and lucrative positions in the government, the church and the military, and those who you wish to put in their place. And that’s where the salons really helped ambitious, but not wealthy and not (very) aristo men.
The lock the aristo class had on all three was stifling France’s growth economically and every other way.
I can toss in with your first commentor’s comment (Charlotte). My son and his friends are 19-20ish, and have formed their own reading group. I admit I was ecstatic that they did this – they choose a book and then hang out in the park and longboard and talk about what they’ve read. I admit I wish I could be a little bird and listen in to their conversations, but I behave like a good mom. LOL! A good, very happy mom!
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[Catching up on blog posts....]
Speaking of fanfic fandom, one thing that stands out as innovative there is the way the (overwhelmingly female) fanfic fans have turned not just reading but also writing into a social activity. We were doing non-fannish group stories back on GEnie in the ’80s (they’re called roleplaying games in fandom now, although they’re not actually games), but now you also see a wild variety of social writing activities. Fests and battles and gift exchanges, team competitions, theme challenges and prompt challenges and remix challenges — writing is no longer a solitary activity, or something you do with one collaborator. But only in fandom; I’ve never seen anything comparable on the original fiction side.
Angie