false 447578 3 At the turn of the century, an unprecedented attack on women erupted in virtually every aspect of culture: literary, artistic, scientific, and philosophic. Throughout Europe and America, artists and intellectuals banded together to portray women as static and unindividuated beings who functioned solely in a sexual and reproductive capacity, thus formulating many of the anti-feminine platitudes that today still constrain women's potential. Bram Dijkstra's Idols of Perversity explores the nature and development of turn-of-the-century misogyny in the works of hundreds of writers, artists, and scientists, including Zola, Strindberg, Wedekind, Henry James, Rossetti, Renoir, Moreau, Klimt, Darwin, and Spencer. Dijkstra demonstrates that the most prejudicial aspects of Evolutionary Theory helped to justify this wave of anti-feminine sentiment. The theory claimed that the female of the species could not participate in the great evolutionary process that would guide the intellectual male to his ultimate, predestined role as a disembodied spiritual essence. Darwinists argued that women hindered this process by their willingness to lure men back to a sham paradise of erotic materialism. To protect the male's continued evolution, artists and intellectuals produced a flood of pseudo-scientific tracts, novels, and paintings which warned the world's males of the evils lying beneath the surface elegance of woman's tempting skin. Reproducing hundreds of pictures from the period and including in-depth discussions of such key works as Dracula and Venus in Furs, this fascinating book not only exposes the crucial links between misogyny then and now, but also connects it to the racism and anti-semitism that led to catastrophic genocidal delusions in the first half of the twentieth century. Crossing the conventional boundaries of art history, sociology, the history of scientific theory, and literary analysis, Dijkstra unveils a startling view of a grim and largely one-sided war on women still being fought today. 436241 1986 Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture (Oxford Paperbacks) total:57|5:28|4:19|3:7|2:2|1:1| 57 242 131 10 5 0 false false Sun Jan 11 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 29 12:39:42 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 11 09:42:58 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Feb 02 17:47:19 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 02 17:49:24 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Fri Aug 28 01:32:08 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 28 01:32:41 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Apr 22 10:49:25 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 10:49:54 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Sun Jul 06 16:33:33 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 06 16:35:41 -0700 2008
Delicious. ]]> 5 0 false false Thu Nov 22 23:29:04 -0800 2007 Sat Nov 24 20:41:03 -0800 2007 5 0 false false Thu Dec 06 09:07:30 -0800 2007 Thu Dec 06 09:09:06 -0800 2007 5 0 false false Tue Nov 20 07:41:57 -0800 2007 Tue Nov 20 07:49:23 -0800 2007 0 0 false false Wed Dec 10 20:36:12 -0800 2008 Sat May 23 17:29:52 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Sun Sep 09 14:52:54 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 09 14:55:53 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Sat Nov 14 19:52:25 -0800 2009 Tue Oct 27 01:22:41 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 27 01:22:41 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Oct 17 08:24:26 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 17 08:24:26 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Sep 22 22:02:48 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 23 20:08:16 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Sep 20 21:26:39 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 20 21:26:39 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Sep 15 00:53:59 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 15 00:53:59 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Tue Aug 25 06:52:45 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 25 06:52:45 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Aug 24 10:52:24 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 24 10:52:24 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Thu Aug 20 14:43:36 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 20 14:43:36 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Thu Aug 13 21:20:01 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 21:21:59 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Thu Aug 13 18:50:17 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 18:50:17 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=447578