Gender issues in Literature: Poes The Oval Portrait and Ovids Pygmalion - Research Paper Example

?Gender issues in Literature: Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” and Ovid’s Pygmalion Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Oval Portrait depicts the obsession ofan eccentric artist. The narrator of the tale forcibly enters in an abandoned chateau in the Apennines. He soon gets absorbed in observing the painting that adorned the walls of the room and begins to read a book which “purported to criticise and describe” the paintings (Poe). He then finds a painting in a dark corner of the room which surprised him for its life-like appearance. He soon learnt from the book that it portrayed the wife of an artist who became so engrossed in his own work that he paid no attention to his wife who eventually died. In another tale from Greek mythology, an ancient Roman poet Ovid narrated how a Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion fell in love with his own ivory statue. Although Pygmalion despised women, his obsession towards his statue made him pray to Goddess Venus for a wife. The prayer was granted as the statue gained life and became a woman whom Pygmalion got himself married (Ovid). Gender roles and relations are reflected in The Oval Portrait that depicts how men use and exploit the physical beauty of women in the name of art and cultural values. The narrator finds a portrait that is “absolute life-likeliness” (Poe). From the notebook he learns that a beautiful young lady has been forced to pose for the painting. The artist who is her husband gets engrossed in his painting so much that he forgets her presence and even rarely turns back to regard her countenance. He soon begins to paint her in accordance with his own imagination of how he wants to envision her. In this short story, it is illustrated how men persuades or forces women to remain as a passive gender. This is symbolized by the woman’s act of sitting silently so that the man can exploit her presence to satisfy his love for art. The artist represents men as creators who are happy to let women play the role of passive agents. This story not only reflects the true status of male gender’s control over the female, but also depicts how naturally the men create a cultural division with women. The artist to get a model for his painting made his wife to sit in front of him which she could not refuse because “she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high turret-chamber” (Poe). Thus the woman is turned into a material to be used by her husband for his painting. Thus the artist becomes the Subject who exhibits power over his wife to make her endure discomforts for the sake of his artistic pleasure. The artist soon becomes so involved with his painting that he fails to see his wife is physically wasting away: “the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from canvas merely, even to regard the countenance of his wife” (Poe). After some time the artist begins to paint from his own imagination and gave shape to the painting according to his own point of view. This reflects how a woman is shaped by a man’s ideology (Orhon, 3). In another perspective, man as producer and consumer is clear in this story. Here the artist is the producer who creates an image of his wife, while the lady obliges him by sitting meekly for weeks to be exploited by her husband. The image produced by the artist represents the finished product that is to be consumed by viewers; here the male narrator plays the role of the consumer who sees the painting on the wall. This situation shows how men treat women as object of pleasure and exploits them according to their own will. The way the lady abides by the artist’s wishes and chooses to wither away instead of protesting goes to prove how “socially elaborated situations give more power to men and less to women” (Orhon, 4). Moreover, when the narrator sees the painting he does not contemplate the moral or ethical aspects of it, rather he gets vehemently carried away by the “immortal beauty of the countenance” (Poe). The narrator like the artist considers women as an object of art, and thus the story established a moment of a common feeling of women as subject of pleasure (Gibian, 60). In Ovid’s tale, the sculptor Pygmalion used to abhor women as he was “shocked at the vices Nature has given the female disposition” (Ovid) and for a long time lived the life of a bachelor. He then goes on to make an ivory statue and “gave it greater beauty than any girl could have” (Ovid), and eventually fell in love with his art which was nothing but his own idealized version of woman. He even prays for a wife like his ivory statue although his real desire was to have a wife who would be replica of his ivory girl. This sequence reflects the societal norm where a man emphasizes on the physical beauty of a woman (Laurence, 113). After being blessed by Goddess Venus, Pygmalion returns home and kisses the statue and feels dissolution of ivory and felt “wax growing soft in subshine” (Ovid). Venus giving life to the statue removes the boundary between male as creator and female as creator. However, “Ovid’s invocation of wax at the moment of divinely facilitated animation undermines Venus’s subversiveness” (Bloom, 45). In a vital moment of the story, Ovid delegates the role of creator to Goddess Venus. However, during the phase of metamorphosis it was Pygmalion who felt the softening of ivory with his fingers, thus reflecting man as creator. In this way, Ovid brought in the foreground Pygmalion’s role in creation and relegated female power of creating life within the statue to the background. Another symbolism has been the fact that a male figure Pygmalion carved the ivory statue of a woman which indicates man molding the shape of a woman. As Pygmalion molded wax to make the statue, the wax symbolized how a man has the power to dictate a woman’s life, and how the woman lacks a sense of self (Bloom, 45-46). Comparisons between the male characters The central theme of both the stories lies in the relationship that established between art which is a virtual form of life with the real life. The similarity between Poe’s artist and Pygmalion is that both of them created a form of art that depicted their ideologies of a woman. Poe’s artist is more a modern interpretation of Pygmalion. Although in literal sense Poe’s portrait does not become alive like Pygmalion’s statue, but figuratively Poe’s artist infuses life in his painting that resulted in the ultimate death of his wife. It was more like the artist’s wife failing health was gradually infusing life in the painting. In both stories it was the female who was the giver of life like Goddess Venus in Pygmalion’s statue and the wife’s deteriorating health in her husband’s painting, but in both cases it was the male artists’ workmanship that allowed art to take the form of life indicating that a woman’s identity is established by a man’s ideology. Conclusion Literature has always been an intrinsic part of society either by reflecting its cultural system or contributing towards forming culture. Man as creator of woman’s identity has been established norm of society with woman being subject of his pleasure and whims. In both the above stories the male characters created and controlled women with their ideologies, thus demonstrating art’s contribution towards creation of certain values in society. Although in literal sense, a woman gives birth to life but these stories depicted the social culture that allows the male figure to shape her identity according to his desire. References Bloom, Michelle E. Waxworks: A cultural obsession, Minnesota: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2003 Gibian, Peter. “Anticipating aestheticism: the dynamics of reading and reception in Poe.” 49-74, In Short story theories: A twenty-first-century perspective, edited by Viorica Patea. N.Y.: Rodopi, 2012 Laurence, Dan H. “On Shaw’s Pygmalion, Play and Film.” 113-128, In Screening the Stage: Studying the Cinedramatic Art, edited by Peter Lang & Bert Cardullo. Germany: Peter Lang, 2006 Orhon, Benan. “Ideology and Gender in ‘The Oval Portrait’ by Edgar Allan Poe”. Academia. n.d., July 22, 2013 from: http://www.academia.edu/1153103/ Essay_on_Ideology_and_Gender_in_The_Oval_Portrait_by_Edgar_Allan_Poe Ovid. The Story of Pygmalion. Translated by Rolfe Humphries, 1954 from: http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/classical/humphries1.html Poe, Edgar Allan, The Oval Portrait, 1850 from: http://poestories.com/read/ovalportrait Read More