JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAlN
191
by the sword or the spear of another, on the field of battle." Importantly,
"the woman in tragedy is more entitled to play the man in her death than the
man is to assume any aspect of woman's conduct, even in his manner of
death." Chillingly and powerfully, there is, for women, "liberty in tragedy–
liberty in death." By resisting any temptation to dogmatize, to take the
Greeks to task one more time for, in Epstein's words, suppressing "women's
rights," a remarkable achievement indeed as there were no "rights" of any
sort to suppress, the concept of rights being entirely foreign to the Greeks,
Loraux opens a window into the world of Greek tragedy that was, at least
for me, and I assume for many others, previously closed.
Finally, Banta's enormous work is wonderfully evocative. She begins
with some rather loose definitions of imaging as "the making of visual and
verbal representations ... and responses to these artifacts at every level of
society." There is, she notes in line with Scott's theoretical discussion, "no
unity, no access to interpretive certainties, no absolutes, no guaranteed rap–
port between seeing and knowing in a society struggling with conventions
that were in the process of creating still newer conventions." If Banta had
been in the room as I read these words, I would have kissed her. Without in
any way backing off political implications; without in any way diluting
awareness of and concern with gender; without in any way muting the
feminist energy at work in her text, Banta offers up ideals and images that
have simultaneously differentiated and "nationalized," constructed unities and
marked separateness.
She discovered that between 1876 and 1918 the images being offered
about the American female to the public at large were "not only varied to
the point of potential self-contradiction, they were all pervasive." She finds
the Beautiful Charmers, the New England Woman, the Outdoors Girl, even
the Feminine Charms of the Woman Militant. Changes in "feminine ideals"
were responses to "wider social forces, idealizations and discontents," and
themselves helped to deepen or to soften these contradictory forces. For
example: promoting visions of the militant as an attractive woman, the New
Woman as an affirmative idea, was taken up as one way to gain public
approval of social change. At once commercial, personal, political, and
aesthetic, one set of images frequently provoked a counter-set. For every
Woman Militant there were several Mothers as Angels, and visions of the
winged female decorated classroom, churches, and libraries. Indeed, these
restrictive idealizations, for example, "Angels, We Call Them Mothers Down
Here," a 1921 pop song, invited satiric and surreal counterpoint. Banta
expands upon the contributions of several authors of
Behind
the
Lines,
when
she elaborates the many feminized ways in which America herself is and has
been represented - as Columbia, as Iron Amazon, as Sacred Mother, as the
Girl He Left Behind. This is a splendid effort.
Towards the end of her remarkable career, Hannah Arendt and her
