NOTE: At the end of each week, students are required to complete five journal entries: four in response to the readings and lectures of each class day (Monday-Thursday), and a fifth that attempts to tie pre-approved self-directed field trip experiences to the focus of the class. Below are the best entries from the first week of journal work. (Some copyediting was done before publication.) —Carol
Maria Hicks, Jordan Worrell, Zoe Harr, Lindsey Patterson, Jonathan Gonzalez, Aron Gates
Aron Gates
Entry 1
During week one of the feminism course, we learned about four different materials that related to us what feminism was like in the Middle Ages. We learned of Margery Kempe and her interesting quirks. Margery Kempe is a woman in the 14th century who was once an extreme sinner, but then devotes her life totally to God (or at least her idea of what the devotion should look like). We learned that Margery Kempe had ‘visions’ of these spiritual experiences that ended up completely influencing her personal life. By seeing these visions, and by starting with the formulaic prayers, Kemp realizes that she must go out on a journey to rectify her past sins. Earlier, she had tried starting a few businesses but all of them failed. This caused her to believe she was cursed and needed to change her spirituality. Her journey starts with her relationship with her husband. Kempe tries to convince her husband to not have any sex in order for her to be closer with God. This is important, because this is a form of woman empowerment that is not often seen at all in these times. Kempe succeeds in convincing her husband to not have sex with her and also succeeds in convincing him to come with her on an epic pilgrimage. The result is that she becomes ‘closer’ to God and then starts screaming and crying during these visions she has. Kempe was interesting to me, after reading and learning about Kempe I started seeing some relations to her in my touring of Florence, just by noticing the real lack of women business owners here in the small shops…. Her attempting to start her own businesses was a big woman empowerment move and it’s weird to see a big disparity in that today!
Jonathan Gonzalez
Experience Entry
Already at the end of the first week of courses I was thinking of ways in which I could utilize some of the stuff I learned in class out in the physical world. We had our first trip to Siena, which housed the head of St. Catherine of Siena, the Co-Patron Saint of Italy. The grizzly sight of a severed head that has remained faithfully human (she was beheaded in 1380) reveals a heightened sense that the work of a divine being has intervened in the preservation of the flesh. It was a powerful experience, especially having the background information from this week’s readings in the back of my mind. Additionally, the readings themselves have already opened my mind to literature written by women or described by anti-anti-feminists. I had not realized that some of the most famous stories of the Middle Ages were written with the intent of being pro-woman. This is in contrast to the anti-feminist of St. Jerome, most notable in his “books of wicked wives”. Honestly, it was disturbing to find out that anti-women rhetoric was being spewed out from as early as the 300s. And to think that one person can have such a profound effect on the fate of a gender. Luckily, especially evident in The Prologue of the Wife of Bath and The Decameron, we see that some male writers will not fall victim to such sexist writings, and instead the plentiful fruits unbound by the triumphs of women.
Zoe Harr
6/7/18 – Day Four: Aubrey Plaza is MY God
It’s nearly impossible for me to read literature written from the first person perspective of a woman when the author is a man, so I was happy to have been able to read something that was in third person so my skin didn’t crawl as much. Even so, there were stories in The Decameron, specifically two of the Third Day’s stories, which inspired The Little Hours, that I’d argue were written through the male gaze. Specifically, I think of the graphic (in terms of it being written during medieval times) sex scenes that are not only explicit but also blatant rape that I read to be swept under the rug as something that was enjoyed by the man because who wouldn’t want to have sex with nine sexually aggressive women?
The women specifically acknowledge how easy it’d be to take advantage of the man because of his disabilities which would make him incapable of getting help or stopping them. If that doesn’t spell out rape, I don’t really know what does. I think that it’s really simple to write off women being sexually aggressive as something sexy and enticing, even if it is molestation, because society has engraved into the rules of sex that men will always be horny and ready to bone, no matter the circumstances. It’s simply hypocritical to say that a female being raped is bad but a male being raped isn’t genuinely rape, because he probably wanted it. That double standard isn’t okay, which is why I can’t stress enough that feminism is for everyone.
I really enjoyed how The Little Hours had a similar situation but with two women rather than a woman and a man, because it forced the viewer to assess personal feelings between the two. I was definitely more uncomfortable with the female rape scene than the male rape scene simply because the woman was much more vulnerable and unable to protect herself. Between the two victims, neither party initially wanted to have a sexual encounter with someone else, but ultimately decided that he or she was into it by the end of it. This poses the question: is there a line between rape and consensual sex?
Mariah Hicks
Coming into this course, I honestly had no idea what to expect. Having never studied feminism before or having never even plunged deeply into the subject, I was unsure of how I would relate to a label that I could barely even define. Although the concept is not new to me, learning about it has opened my mind to what the theory contains as a whole. I had a keen comprehension of what feminism meant to the world, but I never truly understood what it meant to me as an individual and as a female.
The definition of feminism as “women restructuring the social hierarchy that has placed men at the head of the table” gave me insight into the realms of male domination and just how central it is to our way of living. Since the beginning of time, all we have known was male dominance. The story of Adam and Eve, for example, placed Adam in ruling over Eve. It was under Eve’s temptation by the serpent that woman was thrown into a life of suffering, which we as women of course experience today in the modern-aged world. The act of reconstructing the placement of male at the peak has proven itself seemingly unattainable. Women are marginalized to the surrounding seats of the table while the head chair is obtained by men. The discovery of feminism as a movement was to help society navigate through its already constructed dimensions of how the world should work. Feminism, in a way, is not only a movement though, but a mindset that caters to breaking the barriers and standards that women have been placed behind and producing to society a new understanding of equality. The pieces of film and literature that we discussed in class this week presented some of the many levels of feminism and how those levels are viewed and operated by others.
Lindsey Patterson
Day Three
I find it very interesting that men like Boccaccio and Chaucer, who lived in a time when women’s rights were almost laughable, would write stories like The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales that featured empowered and intelligent women. I guess my shock comes mostly from the fact that they were men, and also considering that the women writers who basically were degrading themselves over religion (from the day before) lived around the same time period.
Boccaccio used his book almost as a platform to empower females, making the story about seven women who use their intelligence and self-awareness to “employ” the help of men in order to escape the plague. He also uses specific themes for each day that could be taken as aspects of female empowerment as well, in particular the theme of Day Three, “painfully acquired or lost and regained something.” This, I believe, perfectly suits the struggle for women’s rights throughout history and the sacrifices that they have consistently had to make to regain a stronger sense of themselves and their community, simply because they are women. I also appreciate the satire of the Catholic church from day one, considering they have constantly oppressed people throughout history, but even more so women.
Chaucer, writing about a woman like the Wife of Bath, who is so unashamed about her confidence and her sexuality (regardless of how it would have been received at the time) is phenomenal. She is not only a strong female character, but also has a lot of depth as a character, considering she has the most length backstory. She is also very interesting because in her confidence she makes some very poor judgement.
Jordan Worrell
Day 2
After reading the Book of Margery Kempe and Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich, I felt that there was a very consistent theme of never needing anything more than the presence of Christ. In the book of Margery Kempe she is so obsessed with being as close to the presence of God as much as humanly possible and did everything and anything to make sure so that when she would die that she would be with Christ. She went as far as to not even sleep or interact sexually with her husband and dedicated her married life to being chaste. In Revelations of Divine Love, Julian puts a strong focus on how the only thing that is ever important in her Earthly experience is to be as faithful of a servant to God as much as possible because the only thing that matters in her eyes in to get into heaven once she dies. Both of the texts have that very concept in common and both really focus on how Earthly possessions and materials really don’t matter. Also, both show a strong sense of dread and distaste for their own lives, it seems. I would imagine that if you were a woman who was being oppressed during the 1300s-1400s, that one of the only redeeming things would be to know that you were valued in who you believed to be Christ. I think that could be a huge reason as to why women back in the day were so focused on getting into heaven and not caring about their lives—because the oppression that was brought upon them by the men in society caused them to not be able to have hardly any opportunity whatsoever. I would imagine that one of the only things that women could have freedom to do during that time would be to express their faith in a passionate way. It just seems very upsetting to think that women were so oppressed and looked down upon by society that the only thing that they looked forward to in life was dying and then being reunited with Christ.