#the tower is gender

[clytemnaestraes]

Alicent + the woman in the window: Analysing the trope

“You desire not to be free, but to make a window in the wall of your prison”

— Rhaenys to Alicent, Hotd 1x09

There's a lot going on between Alicent and windows in House of the Dragon:

Alicent is a hightower, a woman trapped in a tower looking out the window. Her daughter and granddaughter die by jumping out the window.

For the purpose of this post, I'm limiting myself to analysing the "woman in the window" trope as seen in art.

The woman in the window has has been featured in Mediterranean pottery from the fourth century BCE through Botticelli, Raphael and Rembrandt, Sickert and Picasso.

A window is a border between the inside and the outside, the private and the public, the light and the dark. It provides commentary on cages, frames, prisons, and the limit of the subject's freedoms and horizons.

When a woman is framed in light streaming through a window, we are are seeing her as she was seen by the artist.

Tracy Chevalier noted the presence of a "relentless male gaze" when she visited Reframed: The Woman in the Window, an exhibition at Dulwich Picture gallery.

Between those two poles there are various depictions and judgments of women. Sometimes they’re prostitutes; other times they are the Virgin Mary.

In fact, among the earliest depictions of "a woman in the window" is a Mediterranean vessel depicting a courtesan.

1. Courtesan in a window, 18th century

2. The caption of "Woman at the Window" by Degas reveals that the featured woman is a courtesan he paid to model for him.

3. The Virgin and the Child, seen by a window

Are women in windows protected by being inside and shutting out the world, or are they being confined against their will?

In one of Picasso's portraits, his partner Francoise Gilot looks out the window, her hands pressed against the glass. Tracy notes that

knowing what we know about Picasso and his partners, it is clear Gilot is trapped inside the male gaze (though she does eventually escape the relationship), her hands semaphoring anxiety.

Windows and Waiting

Windows are also linked to waiting, and this is especially true of women in medieval times, waiting at the window for men to return from war, waiting at the window to learn their own fate.

[mothervega]

anyone out there who enjoys both Bive and The Smiler i’m boutta summon all of you cuz I MADE A SMILER INSPIRED BIVE AVATAR MUAHAHAHAHAA

[abrandnewshadow]

2007 la ink kat von d - frank iero episode

[theeretblr]

The first thing I ever paid for with money I earned from Twitch was a 1 day trip to Paris with my brother in 2020. Now I am here to attend TwitchCon. It's good to be back! :D

It's also my first time wearing a crop top in public, so I'm a little nervous, but feel great!

[deiaiko]

My contribution for maid day last week, feat Grace (Bam) and Agni (Khun)

Masterlist

[whereismyhat5678]

I DID IT I DID IT I DREW THE- THE PEPPINA- LOOK LOOK!!-

UUUUARRRRAGAGAHAGGAHAA SHE’S LEGIT SO PRETTY ACTUALLY WHY HAVEN’T I DRAWN HER YET- *DIES-*

[incorrecttowerofgodquotes]

I’ll never mentally recover from them

[future-supertuna]

this is very in-text but i love that zoro gets attuned to kiku from the get-go not only because of this sword wielder code that he's followed through all extremes of the practice, from brook to kin'emon -- recognizing and respecting all masters -- but because her existence is the solid evidence, the living proof that kuina was wrong

[atopvisenyashill]

i was thinking more about characters Performing Gender, but not necessarily Transgressing Gender. I wound up focusing on Ned and Sansa bc I feel like I understand them the most but-

Sansa as a hostage is imo the most obvious (bc it’s so well done) moment of someone clearly Performing Gender but not being transgressive in that performance. Which isn’t to say it’s not a complicated performance; it’s a fine line Sansa walks between weaponizing her gender to protect herself without seeming too fake. She’s trying to placate the Lannisters by playing the perfect, dedicated, air headed betrothed because it’s the only defense she has - if she outwardly rebels, she will be punished in a likely violent and/or sexual way (which isn’t even conjecture - when she says “or maybe he’ll give me yours” Joffrey has her struck with an armored hand). She’s not quite successful in being convincing but that’s because it’s a rather extreme situation; despite no one believing her, she does make herself seem meek and stupid enough that no one suspects she’s plotting to escape with Dontos until she’s well away from KL. The fact that she even has Dontos to confide in is because of Sansa’s relationship with gender! When she saves him, she covers her rebellious slip by playing up Joffrey’s intelligence & his role as King; she reaches for “tools” of her gender AND of ~proper manhood~ to save a life and herself from another beating. Her retreats into the godswood and silence are very much Sansa attempting to recharge from these draining interactions, the same way a knight would need to stop and eat and rest after a fight. She is fighting, constantly, by forcing herself to stay within the narrow confines of a specific type of gender performance as a way of shielding herself from harm.

Ned yelling at Cat is another big one, and I’ve seen the scene referred to as Ned using his patriarchal power to scare Cat, which is a great description. It feels like a Performance because Ned is putting on this terrifying Lord Stark mask in an attempt to get Catelyn to stop asking about Jon (and Lyanna). This is not how he usually acts with those he loves! When Ned is with His People, he is welcoming of questions, curiosity, emotion, even transgressive thought (to a point! the idea that Ned is a feminist because he lets Arya learn to fight is Not accurate but you can’t deny he allows significantly more flexibility wrt gender expression than most of the fathers we meet in this series. the bar is in hell tho). Yet when Cat asks him about Jon’s mother, Ned scares her so well she stops asking & still remembers the moment bitterly over a decade later. And if that snippet we see through Bran’s eyes of Ned praying that Cat will forgive him does come after she asks (like it’s suspected), it’s clear not only that this is a performance he’s putting on & weaponizing against Cat, it’s one he does not like using as a weapon against someone he is close to. After using the power his gender gives him to cause harm, he retreats to the godswood and silence to pray and rest, much like Sansa. A spiritual cleanse, the way a soldier may pray after battle, to reset and reconnect Being A Proper Man to Being A Kind Man.

I think there’s something interesting in that two of the characters most widely defined by how well they adhere to Westerosi gender norms both dislike feeling like they had to weaponize their gender. They are exhausted by the performance, because it’s a performance. This isn’t Sansa getting excited over tourneys, or Ned teaching his sons to fight; it’s toxic masculinity, it’s structural misogyny. It’s something they’re good at, excel at, and connected to something they enjoy but when it’s paired with violence, whether done by Ned or done to Sansa, it crosses over in their minds from an innate part of themselves (The Gender) to a performance necessary due to survival (The Gender Role). And that after these performances, both retreat to nature & god as a way of resting and cleansing from the experience.

[bob-mirum]

I AM

B E G G I N G YOU

TO DRAW EVERY PEPPINO GENDERBENT!

ESPECIALLY EVIL PEP.

N O W.

Sheeesh okaay

Hope y'all like it :v

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price

Tower of London (1939)

[blastlight]

i compleeeeeetely forgot about Ship Discourse existing in general, so finding people upset about billford took me completely by surprise lmao

(happy old men* divorce canonization everyone!)

[anghraine]

Do you have any favorite/interesting short essays? I'm in between semesters and not wanting to fall totally out of practice reading academic writing.

I do! It seems like you're specifically thinking of academic essays, which for me are generally specialized enough that it's a bit difficult to recommend them without knowing what topics someone is interested in.

That said, some academic essays worth reading, which are available on JSTOR:

Julia Prewitt Brown's 1990 review "The Feminist Depreciation of Jane Austen" articulated a lot of my frustration with feminist critics' often rather narrow readings of Austen (it's not anti-feminist, but rather pointing out the short-sighted form of feminism and bizarre hot takes in what was then the established feminist literature on Austen specifically). 11 pages long.

Elizabeth McGrath's 1992 article "The Black Andromeda" about the whitewashing of Andromeda (especially in reference to Ovid's Andromeda) in art and general discourse around her. 16 pages long.

Jacqueline Jones Royster's 1996 essay "When The First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own." I have a lot of gripes with composition studies, but this one's good. 11 pages long.

William K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley's 1946 "The Intentional Fallacy" is very dated, but also very worth reading in terms of the history of anti-intentionalism, especially given how important anti-intentionalism is to modern fandom (usually in reference to Barthes's "Death of the Author" but the basic concept long predates it). 19 pages long.

It belatedly occurred to me that you might be looking for shorter or more casual essays than these, or on less directly academic topics (though maybe not!). For instance, if you're more "here" for SF/F than my other interests, there are some great essays in Uncanny Magazine and Reactor among others (I find Reactor a bit hit and miss, but when it hits, it hits hard). For instance, I recently read and enjoyed "Seven of Nine is a Third-Culture Kid" by Dawn Xiana Moon and "On Learning to Read Generously" by Molly Templeton.

I could also give you some recommendations for essays more directly about history or psychology in some area that I find interesting, but that's likely to be less accessible and I assumed not what a follower of mine was likely looking for.

[smalltimidbean]

Is there a mouse in here, bc that's a whole bunch of Squeaks!!! (silly)

[fuckyeahpizzatower]

[ohmerricat]

i hope ruby gets a well-that’s-alright-then-style notdeath. on the one hand it will make haters mad because oh no not another companion with an impermanent end (and i like to see haters mad) on the other it would require creativity to depict this in a new way + i love all the implications i love the dark fairytale quality of these companion exits i love my un-undead schrodinger’s women

with the way the legend of ruby sunday is titled… legends aren’t usually told about living people. legends are stories of the bygone past, of an age long since over, fictionalised and overgrown with folklore like barnacles sticking to an abandoned shell. there is such a thing as a living legend, but they’re exceedingly rare. the unmistakeable raven’s call in the 73 yards teaser, the trailer’s cut to fifteen crying alone after promising to cherry he’d protect her daughter… the foreshadowing is clear as day…

and yet. there’s one massive HOWEVER. ruby appears in s15: millie’s been spotted on set filming it. which leads me to believe — the doctor isn’t one to take the time travel route and revisit companions that in his future are genuinely dead. that would hurt too much, it would cause unnecessary trauma and could break the timeline. that must mean ruby stays alive in some way. ish. she’s alive and a legend and a mystery. girl-ballad girl-song girl-paradox

here she is, fading out.

p.s.: thesis statement on moffatgirls from the tags i left on somebody else’s post about charley pollard.. well it belongs here since it’s basically the semiotic hurricane swirling around ruby at the moment :)