Genji's Male Dominance

            While reading this piece of literature, I become very sickened in the way that Genji used women to satisfy his need for dominance. I spent some time watching the R. Kelly documentary tapes this past summer and Genji’s actions show many similarities to R. Kelly’s actions with women. If R. Kelly’s story is not familiar to you, it is a very long and uncomfortable story. R. Kelly is a famous musical artist that was known for having interest in younger women or underage women. Younger women interested him because of their innocence and his ability to control them easier than a mature adult. R. Kelly would hold these girls in his house, and they would not be allowed to even go to the bathroom without asking him first. Theorists who have been following him believe that he controls these girls until they become almost like a pet to him. The documentary is very interesting and definitely a must watch if you enjoy investigative shows.

If you haven’t caught onto where I’m going with Genji, let me explain. Genji showed interest in more innocent or childlike women. The story validates that when it says, “Something childlike in her fright brought a smile to his lips” (p. 1483). Genji is intrigued in the innocence and we could even say the vulnerability of this woman to be influenced by him. Genji was a married man and so was R. Kelly, but it seems like this infidelity was acceptable for Genji compared to the negative traits it has today. We discussed how common it was for married and powerful men to have affairs with multiple other women. These women threw themselves at Genji because he is who he is. This is a parallel to R. Kelly’s story because the same happened for him. These younger girls or naive young women would throw themselves at him because of his money and fame. A lot of the time R. Kelly would promise musical opportunities to these women and that would make them even more inclined to stick with him. The “player” personality of Genji is something that we often find in wealthy and powerful people today. Although Genji is not at the extreme level as R. Kelly, it is hard not to see the similar tendencies these men had with taking full advantage of who they were.

What were your opinions on Genji and his lovers? Did you think that he was a good lover or a toxic lover?

Poor Margery

It is tempting to put Margery Kempe down as a simple nutcase, but there’s a danger in that assessment—because it unintentionally leads to dismissing and trivializing her life story as one of outrageous delusion, and therefore false. Regardless of the source of Kempe’s behavior—madness, psychosis, depression, divine torment—be it psychiatric or spiritual, she lived it real and she lived it hard.

Sparing neither herself nor the people around her, she drove herself to the utmost extremes of human tolerance. Just consider how far that drive took her: personally, in building (and sometimes losing) her businesses and successfully (if painfully) deconstructing her marriage; religiously, in her unsparing drive to win her place as a Christian holy woman; physically, for she was truly pitiless toward her own comforts (and when the weeping came upon her, that was literally draining as well!); even geographically, given how difficult travel just to France could be in that time—much less a journey to Jerusalem—and the fact that she undertook that journey essentially alone, as an unpleasant, unaccommodating, often embarrassing companion shunned by her fellow travelers. The diagnosis of madness, even if true, doesn't leave much room to acknowledge the gritty, desperate richness and sacrifice of her hard-fought life. 

As for the fascinating discussion on witchcraft (11/5) on the blog: If Margery had been born a century later, she might have been lucky that her madness (if indeed that's what religious intoxication is, as many would assuredly disagree) took the form it did, because her fixation on Christ instead of some other focus might have made it riskier for people to challenge her, having no way to know whether she was genuine or not. (Margery herself seems to worry about her legitimacy at one point, which takes her to visit Julian of Norwich, another and far more respected and accepted Christian mystic.)

But in the 14th century, my understanding is that most of the witch paranoia was focused on men, not women—warlocks, not witches. Women don't come under dark suspicion until the late 15th century, when things start to get really ugly for them; by the 16th century (17th in America), the “pogrom” is in full swing. (I await correction on my witch chronology, if someone knows it in better detail…)

Now, what post is complete without a soundtrack? Back in the day, I used to perform with some friends, and one of the tunes we played was about a witch, Susannah Martin. The words are taken from a newspaper account of her trial...

Justice for the women

In the story, The Book of the City of the Ladies, we see a different world through the narration.  She is lead to create an entire city by three women who represent Justice, Rectitude, and Reason. This city that is established protects women from the rude comments and actions of male counterparts.  Christine goes through each level and learns all different tools that aid in her learning her worth.  The worth is so important and shows that she should always be valued as a woman. A few questions..

1. Should she have listened and built the city? Or left well enough alone?
   
2. Is there more to the levels than what she accomplishes?
   
3. Should we see more of what happens after she completes the city?