With the development of the society, the problem about the females’ social roles and status attracts more and more people’s attention. The reason why this problem becomes more and more popular is that females’ social status not only influence females' lives but also influence social culture, especially in arts. More importantly, learning experience from history is a good method when we try to face the problem correctly. In this way, this essay will focus on the roles of women and related influence on arts through Middle Ages to the 19th century.
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The tailors of London and their guild, c.1300-1500
The female subjects in arts were always about family work in Middle Ages
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The expected roles of women in Europe in the Middle Ages were being a pure nurturer, such as wife, mother, and even a housemaid. At the same time, females in the realm of art were oppressed, and in most instances, the creativity of females was not considered as “arts”, but “crafts” because of many limitations on females. As many artworks reflect, in middle ages, females played an important role in the family labor force. This means that while females took the responsibility of procreation, it was also necessary for them to participate in family works, such as working in farms. In the meanwhile, female monasticism prevailed after the third century. The rights of females to receive the education was minimized. This is how the females in middle ages are bound in the family and why the female art was depressed. More importantly, this kind of oppression was reflected in arts. As what Chadwick writes in the beginning of chapter one, “The general exclusion of women from highly professionalized forms of art production like painting and sculpture, …, Feminism in the arts has protested the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘craft’ grounded in the different materials technical training, and education." (Women, Art, and Society p.43). From this paragraph, we can know that art was exclusive in Middle ages, and women were left out from high-level art production. In the other hand, we can say that female arts couldn’t be considered as real arts by the mainstream at that time. The reason is that, as what we talk about before, the family works occupied the majority time of women, and the social and religious oppression limited females’ right to receive education and training. Therefore, females were hard in getting achievement in high level and professional arts, and their creative works just could be considered as "crafts" which was acknowledged as homemade products. This is how females’ roles influence women arts in Middle Ages.
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| Woman in Black at the Opera, Mary Cassatt, 1880 This image is not only about painting but about the roles of women |
Throughout the Renaissance and into the 19C, the roles for women changed a lot, but, gender roles still played a very important role in females’ life. In the meantime, because of the social progress, female artists gradually emerged and involved in the artistic mainstream, but their developments were still limited by their social status. During this period, the roles of females were bound as family workers who should be shamed and dishonorable by participating in public space. This kind of condition declined, but still existed and gave a full play in prohibited women artists' freedom. At the same time, the lives of different females in different social strata gradually divided. Religion and family oppression still had big influenced by lower social class females, and their roles were still being grounded in family works. However, the industrial progression led to great social change, and this directly relived some roles of middle-class females, and because of this, females gradually got some opportunity in education and public affairs. These changes provided more chances for these females who became the main force in artistic creation. However, this didn’t mean that females were free on arts. This is obvious in the arts of this period. As the author writes, “While male designers received credit for their designs for china surfaces, the painters, usually female and often working and artisan class, remained anonymous.” This sentence shows us the reality of females in this period which is that women gradually evolved in art, but in practice, there were still many limitations to prevent their progress. Moreover, the subjects of female artists ‘works were influenced by their roles as well. For example, as the Mary Cassatt’s painting, Woman in Black at the Opera (242), shows to us, the subject is a woman who dresses pretty and attractive sit in a theater to enjoy the opera. Like this one, there are a lot of paintings show the same theme of females, such as Tea-Time by Marie Braquemond, Mother, and Sister of the Artist by Berthe Morisot. This means that females were portrayed based on their roles: going to the theater, babysitting children and reading. More importantly, this is the true portrayal of females’ roles at that time. (of course, this is upper social class women’ life). In this way, these are how roles influenced the lives of women artists and the subjects of their work.
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| Berthe Morisot: L'hortensia, 1894 As the article says, Morisot 's talent is surprising |
Through the 19th century, women artists faced the challenges that come from patriarchy and domestic life. One of the examples is the story of the talent painters, Berte Morisot, and her sister. The author writes, “Their second teacher, Joseph Guichard, was moved to warn Mme… ‘this will be revolutionary, I might say almost catastrophic’…Emma's marriage to a naval officer in 1896 ended her professional life, a fact she lamented in letters to her sister” (Women, Art, and Society p.238). On the one hand, this quote shows us that instead of cherishing their students' talents and guiding their development, the sisters’ teacher treated their talents as a “catastrophic” to their milieu. This means that males didn’t respect women’s abilities and regarded it as a destruction of their existing patriarchal societies. They thought women’s first obligation was behaving well in domestic life, and females’ intention to chase their own hobby was a disaster for their social system. More importantly, this kind of thoughts leads to the condition that males prevented females participate in public affairs and art training, and this hindered the professional art life of women. On the other hand, domestic life also challenged women artists. As Edma had to end her art life after she got married, females’ responsibilities that women took, such as pregnancy, housework, and social ethics, taken the majority time of females. This means that females can’t have enough time for their exercise and creation. It was hard for female artists to find a balance between art and family, and in many cases, they had to make a choice. In this way, the strong patriarchy society and family oppression on females challenged women artists in the 19th century.
-Xindi Zou
Works Cited:
- Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. Langara College, 2016.
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