품행 지침서에 나타난 여성의 몸: 「젊은 여성에게 주는 설교」와 「딸에게 주는 아버지의 유산」
The Female Body in the Conduct Books: Sermons to Young Women and Father’s Legacy to His Daughters
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During the eighteenth century, conduct literature that conscientiously prescribed women’s behaviors, virtues and conducts became unprecedently popular. These conduct literature attempted to define desirable and attractive women to men in the marriage market. This definition of women was based on the newly emerging gender ideology with the fundamentally different notions of gender that defined men and women in opposite terms such as activity/passivity, strength/softness, reason/feeling, and public sphere/private sphere. Specifically, conduct books constructed women as the passive object of male desire, by prescribing their bodily presence such as gestures, countenances, walking, talking and eating in detail. For example, James Fordyce in Sermons to Young Women, argues, in an extremely sentimental and condescending tone, that ideal femininity is only revealed in the soft, gentle, meek and docile feminine body. He suppresses all the natural aspects of the female body such as laughter, exercise, and sexual desire for the sake of the abstract ideas of ideal femininity. Especially, he argues that feminine qualities such as virtue, modesty and chastity are the ‘adornment’ for women that must be exhibited in order to attract and allure men. Finally, he turns women into relative creatures to men, by urging them to live solely for men. John Gregory in Father’s Legacy to His Daughters seemingly posits a somewhat different female body from that in Fordyce. As a father, Gregory urges his daughters to exercise outdoors vigorously and gain a good health. However, fully aware of the dominant idea of the ideal feminine body which is elegant, gentle, soft and delicate, he advises his daughters never to boast their strength, good appetite and good health to men. Furthermore, he also shows an aversion to women’s voracious appetite and volubility, praising instead women’s quiet and modest reserve. Since women’s eating and speaking were associated with women’s sexuality, we can see that Gregory promotes the prevalent idea of the female body that is asexual and suppressed. Through these detailed descriptions and prescriptions of the female body and deportment, Fordyce and Gregory construct and disseminate the passive, docile, submissive femininity that is only defined opposed to the active masculinity. In this sense, these conduct books function as disciplining and regulating discourses in the Foucauldian terms.
Abstract
During the eighteenth century, conduct literature that conscientiously prescribed women’s behaviors, virtues and conducts became unprecedently popular. These conduct literature attempted to define desirable and attractive women to men in the marriage market. This definition of women was based on the newly emerging gender ideology with the fundamentally different notions of gender that defined men and women in opposite terms such as activity/passivity, strength/softness, reason/feeling, and public sphere/private sphere. Specifically, conduct books constructed women as the passive object of male desire, by prescribing their bodily presence such as gestures, countenances, walking, talking and eating in detail. For example, James Fordyce in Sermons to Young Women, argues, in an extremely sentimental and condescending tone, that ideal femininity is only revealed in the soft, gentle, meek and docile feminine body. He suppresses all the natural aspects of the female body such as laughter, exercise, and sexual desire for the sake of the abstract ideas of ideal femininity. Especially, he argues that feminine qualities such as virtue, modesty and chastity are the ‘adornment’ for women that must be exhibited in order to attract and allure men. Finally, he turns women into relative creatures to men, by urging them to live solely for men. John Gregory in Father’s Legacy to His Daughters seemingly posits a somewhat different female body from that in Fordyce. As a father, Gregory urges his daughters to exercise outdoors vigorously and gain a good health. However, fully aware of the dominant idea of the ideal feminine body which is elegant, gentle, soft and delicate, he advises his daughters never to boast their strength, good appetite and good health to men. Furthermore, he also shows an aversion to women’s voracious appetite and volubility, praising instead women’s quiet and modest reserve. Since women’s eating and speaking were associated with women’s sexuality, we can see that Gregory promotes the prevalent idea of the female body that is asexual and suppressed. Through these detailed descriptions and prescriptions of the female body and deportment, Fordyce and Gregory construct and disseminate the passive, docile, submissive femininity that is only defined opposed to the active masculinity. In this sense, these conduct books function as disciplining and regulating discourses in the Foucauldian terms.
참고문헌 (22)
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