Apparently for Dr Johnson, women writing poetry enacted a “tribadic lust” by forcibly raping the female muse.

… I diagnose an overactive, and undersatisfied, imagination.

Complaints about the dangers of poetry for women go back a long way. In 1589 George Puttenham worried about the “poesies and devises of Ladies and Gentlewomen-makers, whom we would not have too precise poets lest with their shrewd wits, when they were married they might become a little too fantastical wives”.

(From Subjectivity and Women’s Poetry in Early Modern England, L. McGrath, Ashgate, 2002, Aldershot, p. 4)

But if you’re still interested in Dr Johnson – and I have been looking forward to reading Norma Clarke’s Dr Johnson’s Women – I’d recommmend a visit to his house, which is just down the road from me. It is a remarkable survivor run on a volunteer basis – they need your support!

After posting a couple of days ago on some lesser-known Byzantine empresses, I thought I had to put together something on my favourite, Theodora, wife(and spine-stiffener) to Justinian.

I’ve found for her some wonderful resources on the web, most notably Justinian, Theodora and Procopius, “a web directory about 6th-century Byzantium and its greatest historian”. It includes a complete text, with a commentary to which you can add, of Procopius’s Secret History, so called because he wrote it for posthumous publication, while in the meantime writing more or less sycophantic stuff for earlier consumption.

There’s an excellent introductory biography here and the famous Ravenna mosaic portraits.

I’ve posted elsewhere about how certain sorts of women attract certain sorts of sexual slanders, and Justinian as the powerful empress who might have originally been an actress was open to the hottest accusations that antiquity could come up with, which was pretty hot indeed. Gibbon, of course, had to repeat them in his Rise and Fall, but did so in the classic “scholarly” way. In the text he wrote: “Her murmurs, her pleasures, and her arts must be veiled in the obscurity of a learned language.” His footnotes, in Greek, revealed all.

As for the spine-stiffening, well that’s why she’s my favourite empress. After the five-day Nika revolt in 532AD, and the proclamation of Hypatius as emperor in Byzantium, Procopius (no friend of hers), quotes her as saying as Justinian and all of the couriers, locked in the palace, plan to flee:

“As to whether it is wrong for a woman to put herself forward among men or show daring where others are faltering, I do not think that the present crisis allows us to consider whether we should hold one view or another.
“For when a cause is in the utmost peril there seems to be only one best course–to make the very best of the immediate situation. I hold that now if ever flight is inexpedient even if it brings safety.
“When a man has once been born into the light it is inevitable that he should also meet death. But for an emperor to become a fugitive is a thing not to be endured . . .
“If you wish to flee to safety, emperor, it can easily be done. We have money in abundance; yonder is the sea; here are the ships.
“However . . . as for me, I hold with the old saying that royalty makes a fine winding sheet'”

They stayed, and re-established control. There was a massacre of the other side. Of course.

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greyhound, originally uploaded by natalieben.

(or thereabouts)… and as a reward, I offer you a lovely greyhound, thanks to Scribbling Woman, and the Victorians.
It goes to show that there’s nothing new about “novelty” books. Last year it was Eats, Shoots & Leaves; what will it be this year?

Today, 25 November, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

“By resolution 54/134 of 17 December 1999, the General Assembly designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and invited governments, international organizations and NGOs to organize activities designated to raise public awareness of the problem on that day. Women’s activists have marked 25 November as a day against violence since 1981. This date came from the brutal assassination in 1961, of the three Mirabal sisters, political activists in the Dominican Republic, on orders of Dominican ruler Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961).”

From this UN site, where there are more links and reports.

Browsing around the topic, I found the BBC has a sensible-looking advice site on domestic violence here.

The Home Office says two women a week on average are killed by their partners, and on average a woman is assaulted 35 times before she calls police.

I was having a conversation recently where someone said: “is it really two a week? You never hear about them.”

If you want to find the murders in newspapers look in the “in brief” columns of the national papers on Mondays. You’ll usually find a paragraph or two saying “The body of a woman was found in a house in XXX. A man aged x is helping police with their enquiries.” (The stories only make it into the papers on Monday when there’s little other news.)

To the theatre last night for Becket.

The reviews were far from good, and it is a flawed production, but still I thought a powerful one. The play, by Jean Anouilh, works well in places but not in others (Becket seems to go in the second act from embracing God to being angry at Him, without a transitional scene). And, while this translation by Jeremy Sams might work in a “modern dress” production, it grates horribly with the entirely traditional staging: “I see you’re a man I can do business with”, says Henry early on.

But it is in places very funny and played for laughs, particularly the strongly anti-Church scenes, and some of the political manouevres (although the audience seemed disinclined last night to be amused). (The script is not, however, very female-friendly, with Henry’s wife and mother mere caricatures.)

It could be very easily slanted into an anti-war, anti-abuse-of-power vehicle that commented on recent events (as with Iphigenia at Aulis at the National – a fine production); I wonder why it wasn’t?

But Dougray Scott as Becket is really spectacular, strong, coherent, and utterly believable. Jasper Britton is good as Henry in spoiled brat mode, but works rather less well as tortured soul. In the final “whipping” scene he really looks like a drama student miming agony, sad to say.

… or at least pastiche was today’s topic, when I popped up to the British Museum for a talk on the Piranesi vase, the unmissable marble monstrosity – it is a fascinating piece, but you really couldn’t call it fine art – inside the entrance of the Enlightenment gallery.

The current view if that two of the three bull’s heads in the base are 2nd-century AD Roman, possible from Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, as the sellers claimed, as are the “calf” part of the lions’ legs, and probably one of the three main images around the main “bowl”, the one showing the picking of the grapes.

All of the rest is 18th-century work by Piranesi and his co-conspirators, whoops artists. No I suppose that is a bit unfair; from what I understand the Grand Tour buyers didn’t really care if it was original, what mattered was that it was true to the “spirit” and “aesthetic” of ancient Rome.

It was at one time in the entrance to the BM, but when the museum realised in the 19th century that it was mostly “fake”, it was condemned to a shed for decades.

I knew a bit about Piranesi but I also learnt for the first time about Johann Joachim Winkelmann, who worked with Piranesi and who is said to be the founder of modern art history. There’s a biog of him here and a portrait here.

He was also, to put a female slant on it, the guide when Emma and Sir William Hamilton visited Rome soon after their marriage (and before she’d met Nelson). For her story, here’s not a bad place to start.

I’m looking for the female slant a bit harder than usual because this post, as are all of mine, are now also going up on Feminist Blogs, a “community of weblogs by self-identified feminists, women’s liberationists, womanists, and pro-feminist men. We use free software to syndicate our weblogs, in order to raise awareness, bring together feminist voices, and promote cross-linking and discussion between feminist bloggers.”

Hi folks and thanks; great idea!

UPDATE: Sorry, but I’ve just removed the two links to the BM site, because it is suddenly not working properly (see comments). From here you should be able to search for all of the relevant material.