Sex, Gender and the Body Flashcards
Characteristics of Sanguine:
hot, wet prone to optimism, blood, spring, air
Characteristics of Phlegmatic:
cold, wet prone to apathy, phlegm, winter, water
Characteristics of Melancholic:
cold, dry prone to sadness, black bile, autumn, earth
Characteristics of Chloric:
hot, dry prone to anger, yellow bile, summer, fire
What were the 4 Body humours?
Yellow bile,
Phlegm,
Black bile,
Blood
What was the humoral theory?
Ideas followed by medicine studies in Medieval and Renaissance Early Modern period
Concerns of the humoral theory:
Too much of one element could cause disease – need a perfect balance of all elements
What were ‘naturals’?
Natural things such as predisposition (what was inherited), age, environmental conditions, corruption of the basic elements, astrological conditions, gender, contributed to a person’s humoral contribution, all bodies unique
What were ‘non-naturals’?
Lifestyle (how much rest, sleep, exercise, food) a person may have
Physical body affected emotional health
Female Body:
Viewed in a negative sense – women were ‘failed males’
Deviation from the male body
Women’s body cold and wet – sign of their weakness
Binary opposite of the male body
Women seen as a deviation – product of weaker left testicle
Male Body:
Man, hotter and dryer than women
Galen viewed male body as superior to female as due to nature it was stronger
Men product of stronger right testicle – thus they were the stronger gender
Reproductive organ external as subjected to more heat
‘One sex model’:
Idea that due to women having less heat they have internal reproductive system
More lustful due to desire for the greater perfected gender
Women had a menstrual cycle as had internal reproductive system = failed man
Challenges to the ‘One sex model’:
Arguably there is a clear distinction between the models of the gender thus simply not ‘one sex model’
What were the 4 elements?
Fire,
Water,
Earth,
Air
Physicians:
Balance the elements – too much of one element add more of the other
Ill associated with a blockage – natural approach to bodily emissions as seen as part of the healing process
Body depicted to be made up of fluids
Key Historians to remember:
Ulinka Rublack
Lyndal Roper
Galen =
Viewed male body as superior to female as due to nature it was stronger
Gender and Religion:
15th/16th century – Adam + Eve represented the biblical story of the fall
Eve responsible for the fall – due to her weaknesses
Eve created second = symbolic that Eve represented a second-class citizen
Eve responsible for original sin – tempting Adam to eat the apple
Virgin Mary – saves the image of women
Marriage and motherhood represents hat women should inspire to
Patriarchal society – inheritance would follow the male line
Legal status of women equivalents of minors
Post reformation period = emphasis on the family and motherhood – particularly in Protestant religion who believed chastity was impossible thus marriage made it legitimate
Protestantism and women – Luther believed women were born to be wives and mothers
Women ruling over men:
Social class shaped one’s experience of gender
Large family associated with power and prestige
Women and Work:
Brewing and manufacturing jobs dominated by women
Skilled labour taken over by men
Women continued to work yet work was unrecorded
Often women worked all there lives
Religion and Masculinity:
Protestants reformation argued celibacy was impossible
Catholic reformation = greater enforcement of celibacy
Gendered experience – nuns had little freedom
Fatherhood – revival of the image of St Joseph, Joseph became central as throughout the Early Modern Period Joseph was depicted as an active father
Men seen as more rational thus man a greater figure in children’s lives
Women regarded as being inferior to men
Male insults = cuckholds: suggesting man couldn’t control his wife thus she would commit adultery
Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Female Body in Early Modern Germany = Ulinka Rublack
Luther = “although women had brought about the Fall, they were sanctified by bearing children”
“Protestantism had relatively little regard for life-long virginity; its praise of motherhood drew on older traditions”
Childs welfare more important than that of the mother’s health – “Luther famously expected mothers to die themselves rather than let their offspring perish”
“Motherhood was increasingly policed by secular authorities in both Protestant and Catholic town and territories. Contraception and abortion were punished, and miscarriages monitored”
Wurttemberg women =
women who didn’t want to go into labour thus as a result miscarried – these women were “accused as criminals, for such behaviour fundamentally challenged the view that motherhood was natural and sacred”
Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern England c. 1580 – 1640 = Alexandra Shepard
“The association of female honour and reputation with chastity is perhaps the least contested principle of social evaluation in Early Modern England”
“A wife’s honour is contingent of her being solitary, silent and withdrawn, while her husband should be locked into a web of commercial concerns and familiar with other men’s business”
“Ideals of household order, which enshrined patriarchal hierarchies of age and gender, were central to the language of social description and critique in early modern Europe”
Gender and Sexuality:
- Great scholarly debate about the experience of men and women during the Early Modern World
- How views of femininity and masculinity changed over the Early Modern Period such as the implications of the Reformation
- History of masculinity studied less
- Gender associated with inequality and social discrimination
- Gender relations, gender roles
- Gender = ideas of femininity/ideas of masculinity
Histography:
- Gender history – studies both genders
- Ideals of the sex – what a gender should be
- Scholars become interested in gender relations rather than just gender roles
- Individual social role was constructed by gender – how did your gender define your social role?
- Women = private and domestic sphere throughout the EMP
- Reformations affected ideals of masculinity and femininity
Religious view of women:
- 15th/16th century – Adam + Eve represented the biblical story of the fall – resurgence of the story of the Fall throughout this period
- Biblical Story of the Fall = origins of original sin
- Eve responsible for the fall – due to her weaknesses, serpent tempted her due to her gender
- Eve created second = symbolic that Eve represented a second-class citizen
- Eve responsible for original sin – tempting Adam to eat the apple
- Eve sinned for vanity and weakness, yet Adam perceived to have sinned out of love for Eve
- Eve seen as seductive – tempting Adam with the apple
Religious view of men:
- Adam perceived to be created in the likeness of God whilst Eve is created by Adam
- Adam perceived to have sinned out of love for Eve
‘New Eve’:
- Virgin Mary – saves the image of women
- Virgin Mary = ideal women, humility, patience, chastity, obedience
- Mary’s image of womanhood saves mankind and the image of women
Ideal woman:
- Marriage and motherhood represents what women should inspire to
- Subservient to the male – male head of the household,
- Patriarchal society – inheritance would follow the male line
- Legal status of women equivalents of minors
- Increasingly patriarchal society in the Early Modern Period
Reformation and Women:
- Post reformation period = emphasis on the family and motherhood – particularly in Protestant religion and cultures who believed chastity and celibacy was impossible as against human nature thus marriage made it legitimate
- Protestantism and women – Luther believed women were born to be wives and mothers
- Argument Protestant religion increased women’s role – wives could apply for divorce as marriage now civil
- Extent to which Protestantism helped reform position of women weak as Luther still identified women as subservient to women, even if Protestantism gave them greater roles in the domestic world
- The Dissolute Household, Jan Steen, 1660s – emphasis on the running of the household – representative of the role of the mother – if mother acts immoral it is then represented in the household
Women ruling over men:
- Social class shaped one’s experience of gender
- Large family associated with power and prestige
- Men lose control of objects of masculinity e.g. swords and trousers
- Images represent men being under control of women e.g. women hold whips
Marginalisation of women:
- Growing authority of male patriarch
- Women seen as only having a domestic role
- Social class impacted one’s experience of gender
- Elite women particularly defined by their reproductive role e.g. women of these classes may have 20 or more pregnancies – large families represented prestige and power
Fatherhood:
- Fatherhood – revival of the image of St Joseph, Joseph became central as throughout the Early Modern Period Joseph was depicted as an active father contrasting to the medieval image whereby he is viewed as old and has little influence in the upbringing of Jesus
- Emphasis of the father – closer relationship to children, material relationship of offspring, raise children in moral and spiritual terms
- Men seen as more rational thus man a greater figure in children’s lives – instil the values of morality and religion
Male Honour:
- Honour seen as being related to masculinity
- Sexual honour defined through patriarchy
- Occupation and place in society resembled a male’s honour
Female Honour:
- Whilst female honour was linked to sexual reputation – with whore being the most common insult directed against women.
- Regarded as being disorderly as they lacked reason
- Ruled by their body and their lust
Male insults:
- Cuckholds: suggesting man couldn’t control his wife thus she would commit adultery
- Allow their wives to much power
- Husbands lack of sexual dominance seen as a major weakness – can’t control their wives
- Non-sexual insults related to be a thieve or a drunk – could affect a mans role and business
Histography:
Ulinka Rublack
Alexandra Shepard
The Early Modern Body:
- Understanding of the differences between the male and female body
- Idea that the body has a history
- Bodies culturally representative of a period – culturally specific
- How they thought about their body determined how they thought about themselves as members of the community
- Different capabilities of the male and female bodies
- Shifts in understandings – from a one body to a two-body human anatomy
- Bodies physically different over different periods
Humoral Theory:
- Ideas of the humours: medical Greek tradition that underpinned many understandings of the body
- Galen and Hippocrates of Cos = body was a microcosm, resemblance to the universe
- Relationship between the universe and the body
- Ideas followed by medicine studies in Medieval and Renaissance Early Modern period
- Seasons seen to fit into this understanding, as well as the ages of man
- Health derived from an equal balance of the elements and the humours
- Too much of one element could cause disease – need a perfect balance of all elements
- Physical body affected emotional health – mental character identified by too much of a certain humour
- Body perceived to be made up of fluids
- Fluids subject to continuous transformation and could become poisonous if blocked inside
- Inside of the body, invisible and flowing
- External examinations were an indication of something being blocked inside
- Underpinned understandings of male and female bodies
Universe:
• fire, water, earth, air
Body Humors:
• yellow bile, phlegm, black bile, blood – believed to have the same qualities as the natural elements
Naturals:
- Natural things such as predisposition (what was inherited), age, environmental conditions, corruption of the basic elements, astrological conditions, gender
- Contributed to a person’s humoral composition or complexion
- All bodies unique
Non-naturals:
• Lifestyle (how much rest, sleep, exercise, food) a person may have
Too much of one humour affected your temperament:
- Sanguine (hot, wet) – prone to optimism, blood, spring, air
- Phlegmatic (cold, wet) – prone to apathy, phlegm, winter, water
- Melancholic (cold, dry) – prone to sadness, black bile, autumn, earth
- Choleric (hot, dry) – prone to anger, yellow bile, summer, fire
Physicians:
- Trying to figure the balance of the humours to try and rectify it
- Restore the eternal balance of the humours and elements – too much of one element add more of the other
- Remedies sort to balance the humours with its opposite, if this didn’t work they would attempt to drain of the humour that is in excess
- Individual should govern his or her own health themselves rather than going to medical professionals
- Ill associated with a blockage – something was not getting out that should get out
- To restore the balance physicians would take a natural approach to bodily emissions – drain off the humour
- Natural approach to bodily emissions as seen as being part of the healing process
- Body depicted to be made up of fluids
Female Body:
- Viewed in a negative sense – women were ‘failed males’
- Female body was not the male body
- Deviation from the male norm
- Man was hotter and dryer and as therefore linked to virtuous of courage and vigour, women were cold and wet thus weaker
- Galen = Man is more perfect than the woman as the man has greater heat
- Aristotle = linked male nature to the positive humours whilst females were linked to the negative humours. Only one natural sex, women were simply a deviation.
- Women’s body cold and wet – sign of their weakness
- Binary opposite of the male body
- Women seen as a deviation – product of weaker left testicle
- Increase in dissection in the scientific revolution does begin to change this view
- Greater sex drive – women lusted over perfection
Male Body:
- Man, hotter and dryer than women
- Galen viewed male body as superior to female as due to nature it was stronger
- Men product of stronger right testicle – thus they were the stronger gender
- Reproductive organ external as subjected to more heat
‘One sex model’:
- Aristotle = Only one natural sex, women were simply a deviation.
- Idea that due to women having less heat they have internal reproductive system
- More lustful due to desire for the greater perfected gender
- Women had a menstrual cycle as had internal reproductive system = failed man
- Women colder = couldn’t push organs out
- Thomas Laqueur – most famously argued for this model of the one-sex body which predominated well into the 18th century, arguing in which sexual difference was a matter of degree: women were an imperfect man rather than there being two distinct sexes. Tells the story of humoral understandings of the body gradually being superseded. The Galenic model began to fall because of dissection. Two body models evident.
Challenges to the ‘One sex model’:
- Arguably there is a clear distinction between the models of the gender thus simply not ‘one sex model’
- Contested from the 16th century onwards
- Social contexts dictated the models – one-sex models in certain
Histography:
Ulinka Rublack – experience of pregnancy gave essential different meanings to each sex
Lyndal Roper – women’s body seen as unique highlighted the significance of modernity, childbirth represented the radical differences between the bodies
