Walt Whitman and Gender - Quotes and Knowledge Flashcards
Holly Furneaux on the gender boundaries in Victorian writing:
Victorian writing ‘complicated gender boundaries, showing the proximity, rather than the opposition, of masculinity and femininity.’
William Acton on women’s sexual desires
‘the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled by sexual feelings of any kind.’
What did Michel Foucault term the tendency to see Victorian sexuality as suppressed or stifled?
‘Repressive hypothesis’.
How does Matthew Sweet joke about common contemporary ideas of Victorian sexuality?
We imagine ‘straightlaced patriarchs making their wives and children miserable […], whaleboned women shrouding the piano legs for decency’s sake.’
David S. Reynolds on Walt Whitman’s opinions on sexual vices
‘prostitution, like pornography, signalled larger problems in relations between the sexes.’
David S. Reynolds on Whitman’s willingness to speak about taboo topics
‘Determinedly avoiding both reticence and obscenity, Whitman in his poetry brought to all kinds of love a fresh, passionate intensity.’
Walt Whitman quote from “Starting from Paumanok”
‘I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the other, / And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I am determine’d to tell you with courageous clear / voice to prove you illustrious.’
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s two cents on Whitman’s poetry
‘Crude’ and ‘indecent’
Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s opinions on the sexual content in Whitman’s poetry
His poetry contained ‘a nauseating quality’, a ‘sheer animal longing of sex for sex’. Often commented on Whitman’s ‘unmanly manhood’ and ‘priapism’.
Whitman quote on temporal precedence of women in “Unfolded Out of the Folds”.
‘A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of a woman.’
What was “Unfolded Out of the Folds” originally titled?
“Poem of Women”
What kinds of ‘unfolding’ imagery are there in Whitman’s “Unfolded Out of the Folds”?
‘unfolding’ of foetus, the mother’s vulval ‘folds’, the brain ‘folds’ of mother and child
Harold Aspiz on a central theme in “Unfolded Out of the Folds”
‘Accepting the phrenological linkage of creativity with maternal sexuality, the poem celebrates the mother’s “perfect body” and sexual stamina’.
How did phrenologists believe cognitive attributes were transmitted from mother to child in the Victorian period?
The attributes of the unborn child were encoded, “folded up” and concentrated in the parents’ brains.
Walt Whitman quotes on gender equality in ‘Song of Myself’
“I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, / And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man”
How might much of Walt Whitman’s poetic style be described?
Anaphoric
Walt Whitman’s feminist exhortation of America in his poem “America”?
“centre of equal daughters, equal sons.”
Anne Gilchrist on Walt Whitman’s vision for democracy.
‘Who but he could put at last the right meaning to that word “democracy”, which has been made to bear such a burthen of incongruous notions?’
Whitman’s presentation of male sexuality in “Spontaneous Me”?
‘(Know once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lusty lurking masculine poems)’
How does Whitman describe his body in section 24 of “Song of Myself”?
‘turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding.’
Which cluster in Leaves of Grass is particularly homoerotic, with a view to demonstrating societal benefits?
The ‘Calamus’ cluster
Walt Whitman on the societal benefit of homosexual relationships in “For You O Democracy”
‘I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks, / By the love of comrades, / By the manly love of comrades.’
Walt Whitman on the societal benefit of homosexual relationships in “I hear it was charged against me”
‘I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city … The institution of the dear love of comrades.’
Which feminist figure was Walt Whitman good friends with?
Abby Price, a founding member of the women’s rights movement
Walt Women’s passage on gender equality in Democratic Vistas
‘The idea of the women of America … develop’d, raised to become the robust equals, workers, and, it may be, even practical and political deciders with the men - greater than man, we may admit, through their divine maternity, always their towering, emblematical attribute.’
Walt Whitman’s willingness to speak on sexual matters as demonstrated in “Song of Myself”
‘I do not press my fingers across my mouth, / I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and hear, / Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.’
In which poems does Whitman contemplate prostitutes?
“To a Common Prostitute” and “The City Dead-House”
In which poems does Whitman present female sexuality?
“Unfolded Out of the Folds”, “Song of Myself”, “The Sleepers”.
What did Whitman put on the cover of his first edition of ‘Leaves of Grass’?
A daguerreotype
Who was Walt Whitman’s first serious biographer?
John Burroughs
What did John Burroughs believe to be the crowning achievement of a Whitmanesque society?
The equality of men and women:
‘The more democratic we become, the more we are prepared for Whitman … the more the woman becomes the mate and equal of the man, the more social equality prevails.’
The democratic importance Walt Whitman imbues sex with in “A Woman Waits for Me”
“Through you I drain the pent up rivers of myself, / In you I wrap a thousand onward years, / On you I graft the grafts of the best beloved of me and America”.
