The queer child and haut bourgeois domesticity PDF
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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2016 The queer child and haut bourgeois domesticity : Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. Jessica Cresseveur University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at:https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of theAmerican Art and Architecture Commons,Modern Art and Architecture Commons, and theTheory and Criticism Commons Recommended Citation Cresseveur, Jessica, "The queer child and haut bourgeois domesticity : Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt." (2016).Electronic Theses and Dissertations.Paper 2409. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2409 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE QUEER CHILD AND HAUT BOURGEOIS DOMESTICITY: BERTHE MORISOT AND MARY CASSATT By Jessica Cresseveur B.A., University of Louisville, 2000 M.A., University College London, 2003 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Humanities Department of Comparative Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, KY May 2016 Copyright 2016 by Jessica Cresseveur All rights reserved THE QUEER CHILD AND HAUT BOURGEOIS DOMESTICITY: BERTHE MORISOT AND MARY CASSATT By Jessica Cresseveur B.A., University of Louisville, 2000 M.A., University College London, 2003 A Dissertation Approved on April 15, 2016 by the following Dissertation Committee: ______________________________________________ Dissertation Director: Jongwoo Kim, PhD ______________________________________________ Benjamin Hufbauer, PhD ______________________________________________ John Greene, PhD ______________________________________________ Michelle Facos, PhD ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my father John Joseph Cresseveur who would have been proud to see me achieve this milestone. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance of my committee. My chair and faculty adviser Prof. Jongwoo Kim offered constructive criticism, which has made me a better writer, scholar, and educator. Prof. Kim, along with Prof. Benjamin Hufbauer, and Prof. John Greene, are to be thanked for their recommendations of sources to consult to make this dissertation a truly interdisciplinary endeavor. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Prof. Michelle Facos, my outside reader, whose research I have found enlightening. I am honored to have these four brilliant scholars on my committee. No major research project can be conducted or completed without the services provided by libraries and museums. The staff members of Ekstrom and the Margaret Bridwell Art Library at the University of Louisville deserve my gratitude for their accommodating spirit. I also must thank Missy Zellner, the Archives Assistant at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. When Internet and database searches proved fruitless, Ms. Zellner was able to provide background information on John Singer Sargent’s full- length portrait of Alexander Cassatt, which is housed in the museum. During my time as a Ph.D. student and as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, discussions with my colleagues have proven immensely helpful to help me maintain a iv sense of calmness and also to trigger a few “Eureka” moments. As completion of the program takes us in different directions, I hope that we can remain in contact with one another. They are not only my colleagues and my peers but also my friends. Last, but certainly not least, I must thank my two dearest friends Sarah Quelland and Amanda Gomez. For over three decades, they have been my collective rock, my inspiration, my sisters. No matter how busy I became with writing and research, which sometimes resulted in weeks of no communication, they never took it personally. Instead, they offered words of understanding and encouragement, as they have since our childhood. It is often said that having one true friend makes a person fortunate. In that case, I am doubly fortunate—and eternally grateful—to have these amazing women in my life. v ABSTRACT THE QUEER CHILD AND HAUT BOURGEOIS DOMESTICITY: BERTHE MORISOT AND MARY CASSATT Jessica M. Cresseveur April 15, 2016 Since the 1970s, feminist art historians have extensively treated Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. In particular, focusing on class-bound womanhood and domesticity, Griselda Pollock, Linda Nochlin, and Anne Higonnet have provided compelling psychoanalytic, Marxist, and semiotic analyses, seemingly exhausting all potentials for any further historical exploration of these artists. Yet, to date, investigations into the significance of the queer (deviations from normative sociocultural codes of gender identity, sexuality, and reproduction) in the works of Cassatt and Morisot have not been conducted. In this dissertation, queer theory complements the existing scholarship that has focused on the significance of women as mothers in the oeuvres of both artists. Late nineteenth-century norms concerning masculinity, childhood innocence, and normalization were determined by rigid classificatory boundaries that ensured the existence of binary oppositions (masculine/feminine, child/adult/, human/animal, etc.) and rendered any evidence of nuance as suspect. Using primarily queer and psychoanalytic theories, this dissertation reveals the paradoxes in late nineteenth-century vi French and American culture that govern normativity and the strangeness with which established norms imbue behavior that comes “naturally” to the portrayed men and children. This dissertation is divided into four chapters covering queer patriarchy, childhood innocence, and normalization. Each chapter discusses the problematic nature of established dichotomies to uncover the constructedness of normativity and queerness. Chapter One examines how Cassatt and Morisot depicted the dynamics of fathers and family life amid a “crisis” of masculinity triggered by the aftermath of war, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and the physical and psychological ramifications of the competitive corporate atmosphere. Chapter Two reveals childhood innocence as a contradiction to heteronormative expectations and explores the significance of animals and childhood sexuality in the dynamics of both constructs. Chapter Three looks at the normalization of children in terms of pedagogy, resistance to normalization, and suppression of the inner animal. Chapter Four illuminates the hidden queerness in depictions of normative play and the significance of “gender-inappropriate” playtime activities. vii
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