Eternal feminine

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The eternal feminine is a psychological archetype or philosophical principle that idealizes an immutable concept of "woman". It is one component of gender essentialism, the belief that men and women have different core "essences" that cannot be altered by time or environment.[1] The conceptual ideal was particularly vivid in the 19th century, when women were often depicted as angelic, responsible for drawing men upward on a moral and spiritual path.[2] Among those virtues variously regarded as essentially feminine are "modesty, gracefulness, purity, delicacy, civility, compliancy, reticence, chastity, affability, [and] politeness".[3]

The concept of the "eternal feminine" (German, das Ewig-Weibliche) was particularly important to Goethe, who introduces it at the end of Faust, Part 2.[4] For Goethe, "woman" symbolized pure contemplation, in contrast to masculine action.[5] The feminine principle is further articulated by Nietzsche within a continuity of life and death, based in large part on his readings of ancient Greek literature, since in Greek culture both childbirth and the care of the dead were managed by women.[6] Domesticity, and the power to redeem and serve as moral guardian, were also components of the "eternal feminine".[7] The virtues of women were inherently private, while those of men were public.[8]

In the history of Christianity, and particularly in Catholic theology, the ideology of the "eternal feminine" replaced older views of women as inherently inferior and more sinful than men.[9]

Simone de Beauvoir regarded the "eternal feminine" as a patriarchal myth that constructs women as a passive "erotic, birthing or nurturing body" excluded from playing the role of a subject who experiences and acts.[10]

References

  1. ↑ Susan Abraham, "Justice as the Mark of Catholic Feminist Ecclesiology," in Frontiers in Catholic Feminist Theology: Shoulder to Shoulder (Fortress Press, 2009), p. 207.
  2. ↑ Frances Nesbitt Oppel, Nietzsche On Gender: Beyond Man And Womanmpp. 6–7, 16–17, 22 et passim.
  3. ↑ Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (Yale University Press, 2nd ed. 2000, originally published 1979), p. 23.
  4. ↑ Oppel, Nietzsche On Gender, p. 16.
  5. ↑ Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, p. 21.
  6. ↑ Oppel, Nietzsche On Gender, p. 4.
  7. ↑ Oppel, Nietzsche On Gender, p. 4.
  8. ↑ Oppel, Nietzsche On Gender, p. 7.
  9. ↑ Abraham, "Justice as the Mark of Catholic Feminist Ecclesiology," p. 207.
  10. ↑ Debra B. Bergoffen, The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities (State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 143–144.
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