Over her dead body: Death, femininity and the aesthetic

479 Pages·1992·27.713 MB·English

by  Elisabeth Bronfen

OVER
HER
DEAD
BODY
Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to find a Mozart or a
Michael Angelo in your sex, cheerfully, and with the love that
burns in depths of admiration, I acknowledge that you can do
one thing as well as the best of us men – a greater thing than
even Milton is known to have done, or Michael Angelo: you can
die grandly, and as goddesses would die, were goddesses mortal.
Thomas de Quincey
OVER
HER
DEAD
BODY
Death, femininity
and the aesthetic
Elisabeth Bronfen
MANCHESTER
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © Elisabeth Bronfen 1992
The right of Elisabeth Bronfen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7190 3827 8 paperback
ISBN 978 1 5261 2563 7Institutional
First edition published 1992 by Manchester University Press
Reprinted in paperback, with corrections 1993, 1996
First digital, on-demand edition produced by Lightning Source 2006
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external
or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any
content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents
List of illustrations page viii
Preface x
Acknowledgements xvi
Part I Death – the epitome of tropes
1 Preparation for an autopsy 3
Gabriel von Max’s Der Anatom
2 The lady vanishes 15
The death of Sophie Freud-Halberstadt (1920) and chapter two
of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud)
Some psychoanalytic commentary – Klein, Winnicott, Lacan,
Derrida
3 Violence of representation – representation of violence 39
The death of Valentine Godé-Darel (1915) and Ferdinand
Hodler’s sequence of sketches
Part II From animate body to inanimate text
4 The ‘most’ poetic topic 59
Edgar Allan Poe’s famous proposition – An aesthetic moment of
excess. Beauty and death. Beauty and melancholy. Myths of
femininity
5 Deathbed scenes 76
Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (J.J. Rousseau). A historic overview of
attitudes toward death The Old Curiosity Shop (Dickens). Uncle
Tom’s Cabin (Stowe)
6 Bodies on display 95
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (Richardson) and Freud’s
definition of fetishism. ‘Snow White’ (The Grimm Brothers)
v
Contents
7 The lady is a portrait 110
‘The Oval Portrait’ (Poe) and Freud’s concept of das
Unheimliche. ‘The Portrait’ (Rossetti). ‘The Birthmark’
(Hawthorne). Frankenstein (Shelley)
8 Noli me videre 141
Clarissa Harlowe’s authorship. ‘Lancelot and Elaine’ (Lord
Tennyson). Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
Case study. Wife to Mr Rossetti – Elizabeth Siddall (1829–62) 168
Part III Strategies of translation, mitigation and exchange
9 Sacrificing extremity 181
Carmen (Mérimée). Kristeva’s discussion of sacrificial
violence. Turner, Bloch, and Parry’s discussion of liminality and
second burial
10 Femininity – missing in action 205
L’inconnue de la Seine. Lacan’s typology of gender
constructions. Jane Eyre (Brontë)
11 Close encounters of a fatal kind 225
Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess ofthe D’Urbervilles
(Hardy). Benjamin’s concept of allegory. Blithedale Romance
(Hawthorne)
Part IV Stabilising the ambivalence of repetition
12 The speculated woman 255
Courbet – ‘La toilette de la morte (mariée)’. Kofman’s
distinction between an hysteric and a narcissistic woman
13 Rigor has set in – the wasted bride 269
The House of Mirth (Wharton). ‘Frl. Else’ (Schnitzler)
14 Necromancy, or closing the crack on the gravestone 291
The death of Pompilia in The Ring and the Book (Browning). The
Woman in White (Collins). Wuthering Heights (Brontë). Dracula
(Stoker)
15 Risky resemblances 324
‘Ligeia’ (Poe). Brugues-la-Morte (Rodenbach). ‘Vertigo’
(Hitchcock)
16 Spectral stories 349
Green’s definition of storytelling. Great Expectations (Dickens)
17 The dead beloved as muse 360
Charlotte Stieglitz’s exaggeration (1834). E. A. Poe and Virginia
Clemm (1847). Henry James and Minny Temple (1870). Lolita
(Nabokov)
Case study. Henry’s sister – Alice James (1848–92) 384
vi
Contents
Conclusion Aporias of resistance
18 From muse to creatrix – Snow White unbound 395
The dead poetess as muse – Virginia Woolf and Judith
Shakespeare, May Sarton and Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton and
Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar (Plath). The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
(Weldon). Lady Oracle (Atwood). The Infernal Desire Machines of
Dr. Hoffman (Carter). Dying in Other Words (Gee). Last words
Bibliography 436
Sources of epigraphs 453
Index 455
vii
Illustrations
Fig 1 Gabriel von Max. Der Anatom (1869). Neue Pinakothek, München. 4
Fig 1a Der Anatom, showing relational axes. 7
Fig 2 Ferdinand Hodler. Bildnis Valentine Godé-Darel (1914). Private. 40
Fig 3 Ferdinand Hodler. Die kranke Valentine Godé-Darel (1914). Private. 40
Fig 4 Ferdinand Hodler. Studie zur sterbenden Valentine Godé-Darel,
Halbfigur; Rechtsprofil (1915). Private. 41
Fig 5 Ferdinand Hodler. Die sterbende Valentine Godé-Darel, Rechtsprofil
(1915). Kunstmuseum, St Gallen. 41
Fig 6 Ferdinand Hodler. Die tote Valentine Godé-Darel (26 January 1915).
Kunstmuseum Basel. 41
Fig 7 Ferdinand Hodler. Die tote Valentine Godé-Darel (26 January 1915).
Museum der Stadt Solothurn. 42
Fig 8 Ferdinand Hodler. Sonnenuntergang am Genfersee, von Vevey aus (1915).
Private. 42
Fig 9 Ferdinand Hodler. Bildnis Valentine Godé-Darel, frontal (1915,
posthumous). Private. 43
Figs 10, 11, 12 & 13 Clemente Susine and Giuseppe Ferrini, The wax Venuses
(1782). La Specola, Firenze. 100–01
Fig 14 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Elizabeth Siddall in a green dress (1850–65).
Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge. 169
Fig 15 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Miss Siddall reclining in a long chair reading
(1854). Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge. 170
Fig 16 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Mrs D. G. Rossetti (1860). Fitzwilliam
Museum Cambridge. 171
Fig 17 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. How they met themselves (1860). Fitzwilliam
Museum Cambridge. 172
Fig 18 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Beata Beatrix (c. 1860–70). Tate Gallery
London. 173
Fig 19 Elizabeth Siddall. Self-Portrait (1853–54). Private. 174
viii
Illustrations
Fig 20 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Elizabeth Rossetti (c. 1861). Overpainting on
photograph. Walters Art Gallery Baltimore. 175
Fig 21 L’inconnue de la Seine. Plaster cast. 207
Fig 22 Heinrich Mücke. Übertragung des Leichnams der Heiligen Katharina
zam Berge Sinai (1836). Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf. 209
Fig 23 Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson. Atala au tombeau (1808).
Louvre Paris. 210
Fig 24 Baron Pierre Guérin. Le retour de Marcus-Sextus (1808). Louvre,
Paris. 211
Fig 25 George F. Watts. Found drowned (1848). Watts Gallery, Compton,
Guildford. 212
Fig 26 Paul Delaroche. La jeune martyre (1855). Louvre, Paris. 213
Fig 27 Roy Lichtenstein. Drowning girl (1963). Museum of Modern Art,
New York. 214
Fig 28 John Everett Millais. Ophelia (1851–52). Tate Gallery, London. 215
Fig 29 Gustave Courbet. La toilette de la morte (mariée) (1850–55). Smith
College Museum of Art. 258
Fig 30 X-ray detail of the bride from illustration 29. 258
Fig 31 Phillippe Halsman. Salvador Dali – In voluptate Mors (1944).
Photograph. 396
Fig 32 Susanne Hermanski. Die Erpresste Frau (1985). Photograph. 397
Fig 33 Diana Blok. That’s Life (1984). Photograph; Hastings Gallery,
New York. 398
Fig 34 Bert Stern. Photograph of Marilyn Monroe, crossed out by herself
(1962). 399
Fig 35 Cindy Sherman. Untitled # 153 (1985). Photograph, Metro Pictures,
New York. 400
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright owner of all illustrations, and
any person claiming copyright should contact the publishers.
Paperback cover illustration: The Nightmare, by the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli,
1741–1825. © The Detroit Institute of Arts, gift of Mr and Mrs Bert L. Smokier
and Mr and Mrs Lawrence A. Fleischman.
ix