tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post53186974856794086..comments2024-03-28T16:19:46.578-04:00Comments on Grim's Hall: Lars Walker on Annette FunicelloGrimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comBlogger93125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-49974682223944109012013-04-17T10:05:29.840-04:002013-04-17T10:05:29.840-04:00See, that's the kind of comment that makes me ...See, that's the kind of comment that makes me think that you may be interpreting the history via a dogma or doctrine rather than from the facts as we encounter them. That's unavoidable to some degree, but let me suggest that you might, at some point, re-examine your interpretive sources in light of the primary sources -- texts like these sagas, for example.<br /><br />It's impossible to do history without some kind of interpretive frame, because humans need to put the data into some sort of narrative in order to understand it. But some frames are overly powerful: a very good example is Marxism, which provides a powerful frame for interpreting the facts of history. Dr. Eric Hobsbawm, who just died, made a long and acclaimed career of telling the story of human history in the Marxist frame.<br /><br />That can be useful, because these strong-frame revisions provide alternative pictures out of which we sometimes find genuine insight. But it's dangerous, too, if what you are after is the truth. It justifies claims like "never, never ever," and it justifies setting aside counterexamples as "exceptions." <br /><br />But history just <i>is</i> the examples. Where there are counterexamples, there's something about the frame that isn't quite right. I suspect you'll find continuing this conversation equally frustrating, because your frame is much too strong for the facts. <br /><br />In no way do I mean this unkindly. Hobsbawn was a great historian, and he did very much the same thing. Just think about it, or even just let it rest in the background as a possibility that you might want to examine someday. Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-31707695242395743822013-04-17T09:35:13.562-04:002013-04-17T09:35:13.562-04:00Yes, and not all Jews died in concentration camps....Yes, and not all Jews died in concentration camps. Where they did so, it was a not a matter of just treating them "differently."Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-20215558260379167252013-04-17T07:10:07.475-04:002013-04-17T07:10:07.475-04:00Just to be clear: I say she suffered no punishmen...Just to be clear: I say she suffered no punishment, but her family did pay compensation for the killing as if anyone else in the family had killed her first husband. That was the way the Icelendings handled such things. She was treated no differently in this regard.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-43607397412963199052013-04-17T06:54:47.409-04:002013-04-17T06:54:47.409-04:00he was punished, it was because he had trespassed ...<i> he was punished, it was because he had trespassed on someone's property, a valuable female object whose purity was important to her male handlers.</i><br /><br />I wonder where all of this is coming from. What are you drawing on for your idea of what life in Iceland was like? A huge part of our disagreement appears, here as elsewhere, to arise from the fact that you have some very powerful ideas about the cases and motives of people that don't fit very well with the sources I've read.<br /><br />Didn't we read the <i>Saga of Burnt Njal</i> here at one point? Maybe that was before you came to join us, but it doesn't paint a vision of life anything like the one you've just offered. It's true that Unna's marriage is arranged, with a very high bride price because she stands to inherit all of her father's wealth; when she doesn't like her husband, though, her father helps her separate from him permanently, and she remarries at her pleasure. <br /><br />She recruits a man named Gunnar to help her recover that part of her property still in her husband's hands, and he does so at law with Njal's help and advice. <br /><br />Gunnar goes on to marry a woman named Hallgerda, who had not liked her first husband either, so she'd had him killed. She suffered no punishment for this. When she meets Gunnar and likes him, she comes up to him and asks after his voyages. The saga records their conversation this way:<br /><br /><i>So they talked long out loud, and at last it came about that he<br />asked whether she were unmarried. She said, so it was, "and<br />there are not many who would run the risk of that."<br /><br />"Thinkest thou none good enough for thee?"<br /><br />"Not that," she says, "but I am said to be hard to please in<br />husbands."<br /><br />"How wouldst thou answer, were I to ask for thee?"<br /><br />"That cannot be in thy mind," she says.<br /><br />"It is though," says he.<br /><br />"If thou hast any mind that way, go and see my father."</i><br /><br />Now this same Hallgerda would later be responsible for Gunnar's death, when she refused to plait him a bowstring out of her hair while he was fighting for his life. This was to avenge an offense she felt he had once given her during their married life together.<br /><br />Now Hallgerda was no one special -- there wasn't any nobility to speak of in Iceland. She was proud, and free, and treated as free. She was still a woman under the law: for example, the husband provided a bride price for her, she didn't pay to be married. But that the law treated them differently didn't make her 'less human' in any sense.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-78691977421266066292013-04-17T02:36:55.908-04:002013-04-17T02:36:55.908-04:00It's not 'less than fully human,' it&#...<b>It's not 'less than fully human,' it's just different from being a man.</b><br /><br />No, no, no. That's exactly what it's not. I should return to the word chattel, if that makes it clearer, but I don't mean literally a chattel, because that distracts you and makes you object that the legal system didn't permit her to be bought and sold (in all times and places) exactly like a donkey. But she was treated like a man's possession in ways that are deeply repugnant to her humanity. If she strayed sexually, her male partner might be punished, but it was not because he violated the gender-neutral religious proscription against sexual impurity (as was clear from the fact that if he strayed with a woman who was NOT a valuable property, it was no big deal). If he was punished, it was because he had trespassed on someone's property, a valuable female object whose purity was important to her male handlers.<br /><br />She was emphatically not just "different from being a man" in some benign sense. That is an evasion. It is very wrong. No one was doing her any pretty favors. No one was simply realistically acknowledging insuperable differences between men and women for biological purposes. It was nothing nearly so defensible. That is very much like saying, "Slavery wasn't an abhorent moral stain on the masters. The black men were just different from the white men."<br /><br />Am I claiming that in every conceivable way her humanity was 100% denied? No, I'm sure sometimes people were very nice to her, even wrote poems, or took into account whether she found the poems acceptable or offensive. That is emphatically not the point; people can be nice to dogs, too. The point is that the chastity double standard devalued her as a human being; it turned her to a significant (if not absolute) degree into a thing less than a person. It was unjust and hypocritical, a really filthy thing. You cannot rescue it with all these irrelevancies. So what if a few women here and there had little glimmers of rights that kept their dehumanization from being quite complete? If I rob a bank, do I get to point out that I only stole 3/4 of the money?<br /><br />I won't dispute that it was possible for a man also to be devalued by sex in the very limited sense that you cite. You may be right that there is a close analogy between the fate of a man who had been homosexually raped and that of a woman who had any kind of unauthorized sex. What do you suppose that proves? Only that men will devalue men who have been tainted by something they consider unnatural and disgusting, while they will devalue women who have had ordinary sex of the sort the men absolutely revel in. What could be clearer?Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-52100111823632373312013-04-17T00:47:07.865-04:002013-04-17T00:47:07.865-04:00Well, she's a woman. It's not 'less th...Well, she's a woman. It's not 'less than fully human,' it's just different from being a man. As I said, I think I can take refuge in truth a lot of the time -- but maybe not all of the time.<br /><br />So, for example, the ancient Icelandic laws we have record of -- "the Grey Goose Laws" -- treat rape of a free woman, or attempted rape, as mandating full outlawry. But they also provide her with relief at law if someone should compose love poems about her that she finds offensive. That's not like chattel even by analogy -- it's respecting her rights to a kind of autonomy based on what she finds offensive or welcome. <br /><br />Now a man could be raped as well, but he was in danger of being outlawed along with his rapist because of the disgust for male homosexuality among the Vikings. If he proved on oath that it was rape, he was shamed so badly that he was regarded as a 'nothing' in the eyes of his fellows; if he failed to prove it, he was still a 'nothing' for being a homosexual. His only hope was to kill his rapist, which could partially redeem him.<br /><br />By the way, just to be clear: "Not seeing her as a moral agent" is originally Cass' formula, which I've adopted even though I have concerns about it because I want to take her consideration seriously. I take it as a warning to myself, a kind of mental tendency that I need to be careful to mitigate. I suspect we all have these kinds of tendencies, or blindnesses, and it's very valuable to have learned where one is. <br /><br />But I hope it says something about how I see women that I listen to you, and consider your moral criticisms very carefully. I may be less harsh, and more willing to accept excuses from you, but I am also listening to you. I may have trouble understanding you, but I take you seriously when you write and think.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-5223848216153054772013-04-16T22:55:28.497-04:002013-04-16T22:55:28.497-04:00If not literally as a chattel everywhere, then in ...If not literally as a chattel everywhere, then in the sense that she's not quite the same as a human being--in the same way that you have trouble seeing her as a moral agent. We don't have a good word for what I mean, which is why I always struggle with expressions like "less than fully human."Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-47940962980643066542013-04-16T21:21:04.235-04:002013-04-16T21:21:04.235-04:00...damage that occurred to a chattel.
I must amen...<i>...damage that occurred to a chattel.</i><br /><br />I must amend my earlier objection here: there actually was a class of genuine chattel slaves among the ancient Norse. Women who are raped from this class are in fact treated in the surviving law codes exactly as you say, as damaged chattel. But this was arising from their status as slaves, and was quite distinct from the way that free women were treated. Male slaves who are damaged are treated the same way.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-75961219830014919262013-04-16T21:12:55.666-04:002013-04-16T21:12:55.666-04:00I don't want to punish you for honesty, but do...<i>I don't want to punish you for honesty, but do you have any idea how that sounds Grim? You're having trouble taking women seriously as moral actors?</i><br /><br />That's how you put it to me, once, Cass. I remember the discussion: we were talking about some moral issue, and I was saying that I felt comfortable punishing and chiding men for doing wrong, but that I thought that it was ungentlemanly and wrong for a man to speak as harshly toward women. You responded that I could not have that distinction because it made it impossible for me to take women seriously as moral actors, as for example by entering into a contract with them. <br /><br />I've thought about that discussion often since then, and I can see that it is a flaw that I have. Here, for example, I'm tending to see the issue of chastity in terms of predatory men and women who are being victimized by these predatory men. I realize there can be exceptions, of course; but I really think it's true that unchaste men are really more likely to be predatory.<br /><br />Even where it is true, you've helped me see that it can be problematic. It arises out of the fact that I really like women, and so I'm likely to sympathize with rather than to blame them. But sometimes they need blame.<br /><br />In this discussion, the point about the young women I grew up with is relevant. I really liked them. Insofar as their unchastity may have been improper, I couldn't see it; I would have gladly considered some of them as possible wives, forgetting entirely their past if they had only adopted chastity at the altar. I might have just as reflexively disliked the men who slept with them for fun, without a similar interest in marriage. In fact, I think in retrospect, they were just as interested in sex for fun without permanent commitment -- it's probably why I didn't end up married to any of them, because they really wanted something else.<br /><br />Even now it's hard for me to see that as terribly wrong in them, although it's clearly against (say) Church doctrine. So maybe the problem is with me.<br /><br />I recognize that I have a problem holding these sorts of things against women in a way that is not true with men. I don't think it's absurd to think of women as moral actors, but my judgments of them are nearly universally less harsh, and my willingness to accept excuses from them nearly universally greater. To some degree there may be a defense in truth, as for example in the case of powerful or predatory men. However, I have listened to you, and I am trying to be more careful not to always excuse women and forgive them without chastising. Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-64335074997855900352013-04-16T20:57:41.339-04:002013-04-16T20:57:41.339-04:00The tradition was to treat inchastity in women, no...<i>The tradition was to treat inchastity in women, not so much as the violation of a moral code, but as damage that occurred to a chattel.</i><br /><br />That's something like the Greco-Roman tradition. It's not true of Celtic or Northern European traditions, the latter of which especially treated women as free and generally equal (with few exceptions, such as going to war -- not that women didn't fight, but that they didn't <i>go</i>).<br /><br />Thinking of women as chattel is still putting it a bit strongly even for the southern Europeans, but it's entirely wrong when you're talking about that other set of traditions. It's why queens and sorceresses feature so strongly in the Celtic-influenced Arthurian myths, for one thing.<br /><br /><i>To me the Franklin's Tale would be difficult to follow as you recast it. The audience would be saying, "Huh? The guy's having some kind of dilemma about whether to sleep with the beautiful sorceress, even though his wife is cool with it and he's bound by gratitude, honor, and a contract?</i><br /><br />I don't think that's true. The reason I said Malory could have written it is that there are several quite similar stories in Malory, where Lancelot (usually) or some other knight is refusing to have sex with a tempting sorceress out of loyalty to his lady love. This happens, for example, in the case of Lancelot's kidnapping by the Three Queens, all of whom he refuses; and again in the case of Hallewes the Sorceress. It also happens in the case of a perfectly virtuous young woman who is not at all a sorceress, whom he probably really should have married -- Elaine the Fair.<br /><br />So I think it's a story that they'd have found quite natural. It's perfectly at home in the tradition.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-86265549719143835682013-04-16T15:54:09.522-04:002013-04-16T15:54:09.522-04:00I've noticed that it's easier for me to ge...I've noticed that it's easier for me to get you to agree with me, Cass, than to get my point across to Grim -- even making allowances for the fact that he's gone off to do something productive offline and so isn't answering for the time being, the creature.<br /><br />Probably a chick thing. :-) Still, I like the occasional confirmation that I'm not speaking Martian.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-13321417973283446912013-04-16T15:46:59.582-04:002013-04-16T15:46:59.582-04:00re:
The danger from my position is not being adeq...re:<br /><br /><i>The danger from my position is not being adequately willing to blame the woman, and thus to take her seriously as a moral actor -- a point Cassandra occasionally makes with me. I'm trying. :) </i><br /><br />I don't want to punish you for honesty, but do you have any idea how that sounds Grim? You're having trouble taking women seriously as moral actors?<br /><br />It is really such an absurd notion that you have to work at it? And if so, why?Cassnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-30209917659505855252013-04-16T15:38:59.606-04:002013-04-16T15:38:59.606-04:00Bull's eye, Tex.Bull's eye, Tex.Cassnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-55005606901657721222013-04-16T15:26:34.723-04:002013-04-16T15:26:34.723-04:00The danger from my position is not being adequatel...<b>The danger from my position is not being adequately willing to blame the woman, and thus to take her seriously as a moral actor -- a point Cassandra occasionally makes with me. I'm trying. :) </b><br /><br />Yes, and this is very much to the point. The tradition was to treat inchastity in women, not so much as the violation of a moral code, but as damage that occurred to a chattel. Society acted as though sex ruined her but didn't ruin the man. If the man was ostracized (or maimed or killed), it wasn't because he had devalued himself, it was because he'd devalued the woman, which was a crime against whoever "owned" her, so to speak.<br /><br />When a man is harshly punished for trespassing on the body of a valuable woman, he's not being punished for inchastity. Sex per se would have been fine as long as he did it with a woman whom no one minded seeing ruined. There were generally a lot of expendable women around for that purpose.<br /><br />In a society where women are considered people to the same degree men are, both of these mistakes are unthinkable. Where such a mistake is not unthinkable, the society is mired deep in a fundamental error about the essential humanity of women.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-48671126952548169822013-04-16T14:53:48.374-04:002013-04-16T14:53:48.374-04:00Of course I don't think of joining a religious...Of course I don't think of joining a religious order as a punishment, if a woman enters voluntarily and not because the nunnery is functioning as a kind of prison-like asylum from rabid and punitive secular forces. From what I can tell, there were religious orders for religious purposes, and there were "religious orders" that preserved little more than the superficial trappings -- in other words, they were much like religion today. I have no idea what sort Heloise entered, but I think she's a decent (but again rare) example of a sexual liaison in which the man was more severely punished than the woman. Was it mostly about chastity, do you think, or about the fact that this couple were defying dynastic decisions and insisting on making personal choices about sexual partners? Something tells me Abelard wouldn't have been castrated for dallying with the barmaid.<br /><br />To me the Franklin's Tale would be difficult to follow as you recast it. The audience would be saying, "Huh? The guy's having some kind of dilemma about whether to sleep with the beautiful sorceress, even though his wife is cool with it and he's bound by gratitude, honor, and a contract? What's the matter with him?" If it were a Hollywood production, someone would hire a story doctor to make the motivations comprehensible. He would have to be forfeiting his soul to a demon, or required to murder his beloved wife, or something of the sort.<br /><br />I don't have a problem, as you must know, with your general nostalgia for the olden days, which I happen to share. I have a problem with your being unwilling to let go of the chastity double standard in particular, without a lot of hemming and hawing about how it had its undeniably good points, or how it is inextricably linked with customs that have fond associations for you. Slavery may have resulted in good banjo music, but if you wax nostalgic about the banjo music in front of the descendant of former slaves, while not quite bringing yourself to condemn the slavery and declare convincingly that you'd never want it to return, he'll start to wonder if you truly understand what was wrong with it.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-43422473058185377232013-04-16T14:25:47.688-04:002013-04-16T14:25:47.688-04:00I must leave for a few hours, but I've been gr...I must leave for a few hours, but I've been greatly enjoying the discussion this afternoon. It's just the sort of thing I love to do. I hope it has been more pleasant, and less frustrating, for you as well. :) Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-37596567340003333592013-04-16T14:23:52.343-04:002013-04-16T14:23:52.343-04:00And if you'd stop sounding nostalgic for an ag...<i>And if you'd stop sounding nostalgic for an age that failed in exactly that courtesy and mercy, which it would have extended unhesitatingly to a man, you'd sound to me like someone who was no longer infected with any form of the chastity double standard.</i><br /><br />I might never have held it against her in the first place. Most of the women I grew up with were not at all chaste, and I never held it against them. As a young man, it was somewhat pleasant to think that they might be amenable to lusty thoughts, although in fact even as a young man I was of a serious mind about a deep and permanent love being in the forefront of what I wanted.<br /><br />The danger from my position is not being adequately willing to blame the woman, and thus to take her seriously as a moral actor -- a point Cassandra occasionally makes with me. I'm trying. :) <br /><br />But consider also that the Abelard's example isn't all that unusual in the history either. Unwelcome suitors of daughters or sisters were often punished by the family, if not with castration than with beatings or even with death. Men who behaved promiscuously with a sister or daughter might be as well. So that's the other side of the coin -- corporal or capital punishment was often the social sanction. <br /><br />So am I nostalgic for the old age? In some ways. If you put me in the 13th century there are things about it I would try to change, just as there are things about our lives today I wish I could change (and do my best to change). I honestly think there would be fewer, but I am somewhat blind here: I know the age from the things it left behind that others thought worth preserving, which is to say that I've seen its best face. We don't get that privilege with our own age.<br /><br />But one thing I am nostalgic for is the presence of Malory's <i>ideals</i>, if not the various ways in which people failed them. If I could change one thing about our age, I would bring that back.<br /><br />By the way, I can't think of any good reason the <i>Franklin's Tale</i> shouldn't work in reverse. The wife goes off on a journey; the man obtains a fear of her death on the rocks; a beautiful young sorceress tries to seduce him, and he heroically resists until she prys a promise out of him to lie with her if she can remove the rocks. She works some magic to make it happen (or appear to happen), the wife returns, he confesses all, and she is hurt but understands that he did it out of love for her. She tells him to keep his word, and they go to do it, but the sorceress is so moved by the example of true love that she relents.<br /><br />I don't generally like Derrida's technique of reversing everything, but in this case at least it seems to me to make a perfectly plausible story. Malory could have written it! :)Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-13251128349564105702013-04-16T14:08:01.762-04:002013-04-16T14:08:01.762-04:00As a thought experiment, see how well the Chaucer ...As a thought experiment, see how well the Chaucer tale works if you reverse the sex of the characters.<br /><br />Naturally it makes sense to treat someone differently until we can persuade him to alter his wrong behavior. The question is whether we apply the approach to both men and women. Being a modern man, even if one with old-fashioned values, you probably could treat a woman differently until she gave up promiscuity, and then never again hold it against her. And if you'd stop sounding nostalgic for an age that failed in exactly that courtesy and mercy, which it would have extended unhesitatingly to a man, you'd sound to me like someone who was no longer infected with any form of the chastity double standard.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-18503055665317032742013-04-16T14:06:05.150-04:002013-04-16T14:06:05.150-04:00She'd better be the most powerful figure in th...<i>She'd better be the most powerful figure in the kingdom. It's the "Catherine the Great" exception. Roughly speaking, if a woman is so well connected that she could get away with highway robbery and murder...</i><br /><br />Well, consider the more humble case of Peter Abelard and Heloise d'Argenteuil. Their love went against the wishes of her family, so that they married in secret and eventually had a son. Her family responded by attacking Abelard and having him castrated. After that, she took refuge in a nunnery.<br /><br />But both of them enjoyed the forgiveness of the broader society. Heloise went on to become an abbess, as well as a scholar of note, and was thus an important and respected figure in the community. Abelard went on to become a logician at the University of Paris, where he wrote works on logic and theology that are still worth studying today.<br /><br />Heloise is representative in art of what you might call the Guinevere standard: Guinevere also goes astray (far moreso than Heloise, I think, who may have done nothing at all wrong properly speaking -- just in terms of the mores of the day). But she is allowed to reform, on explicitly Christian terms, and likewise ends her days as a well-respected abbess.<br /><br />I realize that you may think of joining a religious order as something of a punishment, and there is no doubt from Heloise's letters that she missed the sexual aspects of her younger days. Still, she was no queen, and while she didn't escape censure, she was allowed to reform. Her husband's censure was far more visceral, although he also was allowed to reform.<br /><br />I think we can still say they were both treated unjustly, but I think we must also say that she didn't suffer more than he did.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-5131369454374179612013-04-16T13:53:42.539-04:002013-04-16T13:53:42.539-04:00You're still confusing disapproval of a man...<i>You're still confusing disapproval of a man's moral choices with enforcing a social convention that makes him a pariah and a non-person, even if he reforms himself.</i><br /><br />Well, 'even if (s)he reforms himself' points to an injustice on any standard of behavior -- that's simply Christian ethics. Obviously that would be a tremendous injustice.<br /><br />But 'unless and until he reforms himself,' I am prepared to make such a man a pariah insofar as I am able. That extends to the reach of my right arm, mostly, but I do the best that I can!Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-25706093444817088902013-04-16T13:51:24.649-04:002013-04-16T13:51:24.649-04:00Speaking of Chaucer, a relevant work of his is The...Speaking of Chaucer, a relevant work of his is <i>The Franklin's Tale</i>. Here the husband and wife are happily married and deeply respect each other, until the husband has to go off to war and a scheming young man comes along and tries to seduce the wife. She is so worried about her beloved husband's ship being wrecked on the rocks, and the constant pestering of day in and out attempts at seduction, that she finally gives in to promising to sleep with the young man if he can make the rocks disappear. He goes and finds a magician who can (in some sense) make that happen.<br /><br />What happens when the husband comes home is that the wife confesses her vow of adultery to him. He forgives her but tearfully tells her that she has to go ahead with it, because her honor requires that she keeps her word. She goes forth to do so with him in her company, but when the young man sees how upset they are over the matter, he releases her from the promise.<br /><br />Now, this is art again, but art points to the forms -- the ideals, I mean. I've always found it to be one of Chaucer's best poems. It may be the ideal to which his other writings about men and women are cases of failure to reach. He loves his wife and is faithful; she loves him, but has a moment of foolishness; he forgives her, but honors the integrity of his wife's word over even his own claim as a husband. Because of the purity of their devotion to each other, the evil turns aside.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-633690893785820912013-04-16T13:51:09.198-04:002013-04-16T13:51:09.198-04:00You're still confusing disapproval of a man...You're still confusing disapproval of a man's moral choices with enforcing a social convention that makes him a pariah and a non-person, even if he reforms himself.<br /><br />I'm excited that you've found a single example to counter the roughly four bazillion examples that went the other way. You're correct, then, that "never" is in inappropriate word except in the limited sense of "so rare that the discussion and research have to go on for a week before someone can dredge up the single exception in the history of mankind." :-) A man can get into hot water by infidelity if he trespasses on a really, really important piece of property. In vanishingly rare cases, his female partner will escape unscathed. She'd better be the most powerful figure in the kingdom. It's the "Catherine the Great" exception. Roughly speaking, if a woman is so well connected that she could get away with highway robbery and murder, she'd have a decent shot at bucking the chastity double standard. Messalina pulled it off for a while, before she was beheaded.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-47031844362882052492013-04-16T13:44:24.804-04:002013-04-16T13:44:24.804-04:00One of the things that I like about Malory is that...<i>One of the things that I like about Malory is that he offers us a number of variations on failures to achieve the ideal...</i><br /><br />I should add that this isn't unique to Malory, but is characteristic of high medieval Arthurian poetry, including the French prose <i>Lancelot</i>, and some of Chaucer's works. They frequently draw characters that look at first like the poet just didn't have much imagination, because the cases start of so much alike -- but the reason is that the poet wants to explore the moral (and practical) consequences of different approaches to the same complicated problem. <br /><br />It comes up especially in two areas, one of which is sexuality, and the other of which is feudal bonds. It's a surprising tradition, a great deal of which has been lost from the consciousness of the English-speaking world. If Malory didn't adapt it for us, we've probably forgotten it. But it's really worthwhile, even if you aren't a neoplatonist. :) Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-11322189510280867662013-04-16T13:37:06.712-04:002013-04-16T13:37:06.712-04:00I'm not sure it occurs to you at all to think ...<i>I'm not sure it occurs to you at all to think that the man has sullied his own purity and worth in the eyes of women, quite without regard for whether he injured a victim. Who could imagine such a crazy thing?</i><br /><br />Well, I certainly <i>hope</i> that is the case. I don't have any problem imagining it, though. Cassandra and I largely agree on the worth of these men; it's clear that they don't merit her respect at all. Nor should they. That's one thing about this discussion that I don't find at all mystifying.<br /><br /><i>"...is to enforce the extraordinary and unparalleled standard of Galahad (who was Western Civilization's most famously and exceptionally chaste man) on ordinary modern men." You will not find many takers, even among men who prefer their women pure. I honor your holding up Galahad as a standard, but you probably have never heard of a man in real life who suffered in any substantial way from falling short of that standard.</i><br /><br />I don't have a problem with the idea that Galahad represents an ideal. One of the things that I like about Malory is that he offers us a number of variations on failures to achieve the ideal, which is helpful in gearing the ideal to the real (and flawed) characters that we are in life. It doesn't change the ideal at all, but it shows a way in which the ideal becomes livable. <br /><br />That's the right way to engage mythic ideals, I think: to take them seriously, not as alternatives to reality but as the ideals of which corruptible reality are partial expressions. But that is entirely in keeping with my neoplatonic metaphysics, which has a lot to say about the purity of forms and their imperfect realization in matter.<br /><br /><i>Can you think of a woman of that time who would have been treated as mildly after a similar escapade?</i><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_of_France" rel="nofollow">Yes!</a> Actually, it's a good example of a man being the one punished for the affair. After Isabella and her lover deposed (and probably later killed) her husband, she reigned as regent for her son. When her son came of age he put her lover to death, but the queen was unpunished.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-42953264683181633602013-04-16T13:24:46.896-04:002013-04-16T13:24:46.896-04:00Maybe I really am blind, because I thought we had ...<b>Maybe I really am blind, because I thought we had discussed that. Wasn't that the point of talking about Galahad . . . ?</b> Not unless <i>"the good of that society was that its values really did offer some institutional and social support to young women who wanted to live a good life that is absent today"</i> means "what we should do about restoring the good qualities of that sadly lost world, now that we know its moral force was based on a terrible injustice to women, is to enforce the extraordinary and unparalleled standard of Galahad (who was Western Civilization's most famously and exceptionally chaste man) on ordinary modern men." You will not find many takers, even among men who prefer their women pure.<br /><br />I honor your holding up Galahad as a standard, but you probably have never heard of a man in real life who suffered in any substantial way from falling short of that standard. St. Thomas Aquinas stood out for his willingness to buck social trends on this subject -- but only after a decade of more of living happily with his concubine, whom he then abandoned. Was he ineligible for his later prominent position as a spiritual teacher because of his past? Can you think of a woman of that time who would have been treated as mildly after a similar escapade?<br /><br />I accept that you do mostly think of male promiscuity as a kind of predatory behavior that requires a slap upside the head. I'm not sure it occurs to you at all to think that the man has sullied his own purity and worth in the eyes of women, quite without regard for whether he injured a victim. Who could imagine such a crazy thing? In men, promiscuity can excite condemnation if it causes a practical problem, to address which he may be required to take practical steps, after which he'll be fine. In women, traditionally, it irretrievably destroyed their value as people, neighbors, and family members. They couldn't fix it by writing a check, or turning over a new leaf.<br /><br />That's what we should leave behind without regretful nostalgia about what "is absent today." It was an unjust hypocrisy that deserved to be extirpated root and branch, with no lingering thoughts of "still, in some ways . . . "Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.com