Smack My Kitsch Up

While I've posted about Grand Tours and eccentric collections/collectors a few times recently, it has not escaped my attention that all the individuals involved so far have been male.

It's easy to assume that only men took part in such adventures, and the ladies sat at home and took tea in the drawing room. In fact, British and European women of the 18th century were increasingly interested in having their own tours and making their own collections (you can read more about it here).

I encountered a brilliant example during my travels in the South West of England.

A la Ronde is a 16-sided building in Exmouth, Devon, constructed to house Jane and Mary Parminter, a pair of daredevil cousins with an amazing collection of travel memorabilia.

A BBC article on the house explains that the octagonal shape is practical, as well as creative:

The building's ingenious design was intended to catch maximum sunlight. Sash windows were built on the angles and the rooms were laid out so that the ladies could follow the sun around the house during the day. They would start on the eastern side and move round to finish with tea in an oval room on the west in the evening. Everything was designed to conform to the building's unusual shape and awkward angles: cupboards and bookshelves have sliding covers, doors slide back into the walls to save space, and flaps come down between each of the doors in the octagon to provide extra seating.

They were so obsessed with traveling that they toured their own house every day!

The cousins masterminded a quirky interior that accommodates and maximises the circular space in clever ways, with some unique storage solutions.(Click to enlarge.)

The article points out that A la Ronde "bears witness to the independence and resourcefulness of two women in an age when the early feminists were only just stirring":

In 1784, following the death of Jane's father - a wealthy Devon merchant - Mary and Jane travelled throughout Europe for 10 years, together with two other women. The 'Grand Tour' was a recognised way for wealthy young men to finish their education in the 18th Century, but it was much more unusual for women to travel alone in this way. Returning from their tour in 1795, Jane and Mary decided to build a house to remind them of their travels and provide a home for all the souvenirs they had collected. 

Tangent alert: it's interesting, because at the time I visited A la Ronde I was traveling in a group with three other women, including my own cousin.

We did some adventurous stuff, and I like the historical parallel - the idea that the Parminters were pioneers of something that continues to this day.

Also, I saw a snail.

Lots of snails!

And this is why I'm always last... too much sitting around in the mud.

Anyway, the sheer amount of stuff the Parminters and their friends brought back is impressive, but the ladies didn't stop there. They also used the natural objects they found (various shells, feathers, rocks and dried plants) to decorate walls, tables and cornices, and to construct pieces of art.

It seems they were fond of writing, which makes me like them even more.

The Parminters' feminist impulses were not confined to travel. As the BBC article explains:

The spinsters went to great lengths to keep A la Ronde in female hands, specifying in their will that it should only pass to unmarried female relatives. In almost 200 years, before the house was purchased by the National Trust in 1991, A la Ronde had only one male owner. The cousins used their unmarried status to their advantage in a world where marriage was seen as the only acceptable career for wealthy women.

Good work.

All the horrific stories of violence against women recently - and the accompanying calls for ladies to watch themselves, be careful, don't go places alone, don't do risky things, etc. - have made me think about the Parminters again.

They were privileged, they were gentlewomen and had money to travel, but I'm sure they would have been warned many times about the dangers of adventuring. I myself lost count of the people who tutted anxiously when they discovered I was traveling alone. Stuff might happen. Terrible stuff. Not a good idea. Bring a man next time.

I find it sad how mobile women are framed as victims-in-waiting, rather than explorers. You can just as easily (and, statistically speaking, are much more likely to) be harmed in your own house than out roaming in the world.

We need more female daredevils, not less.

Who else is going to ship a crapton of shells across the globe and spend years gluing them to their wickity wack house?

The highlight of A la Ronde runs around the interior of the upper gallery at its center. The cousins spent years fastening shells to the walls up here, creating an intricate DIY masterpiece.

You can see a hint of it in this pic.

Unfortunately, their glue wasn't the greatest, and the wall is now so delicate nobody is allowed up there in case they sneeze and half the shells drop off.

This is as close as I could get.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can take a virtual tour of the gallery right here. I highly recommend having a look.

Do it now. I'll just wait here.

...

Amazing, eh.

Get out there.

A Cunning Array Of Stunts

[Via]

My last post about gargoyles reminded me of Raoul Servais' Harpya (1979).

In this short film, a man falls in love with a bird-woman and takes her home with him, only to become a victim of her ravenous appetite. It's both hilarious and super creepy.



Just take those squidgy shoes off, man. Seriously.

Watching this again made me think about how many grotesque frescoes involve women with wings. When you look, they all do.

As the figure below illustrates in extremis, female grotesque bodies are often reduced to three key features - head, breasts, and wings.

These are not harpies in the traditional sense, though.

Harpies have their origins in Greek mythology. As E. M. Berens explains in A Hand-book of Mythology (1894):

The Harpies, who, like the Furies, were employed by the gods as instruments for the punishment of the guilty, were three female divinities, daughters of Thaumas and Electra, called Aello, Ocypete, and Celæno.

They were represented with the head of a fair-haired maiden and the body of a vulture, and were perpetually devoured by the pangs of insatiable hunger, which caused them to torment their victims by robbing them of their food; this they either devoured with great gluttony, or defiled in such a manner as to render it unfit to be eaten.

Their wonderfully rapid flight far surpassed that of birds, or even of the winds themselves. If any mortal suddenly and unaccountably disappeared, the Harpies were believed to have carried him off. Thus they were supposed to have borne away the daughters of King Pandareos to act as servants to the Erinyes.

The Harpies would appear to be personifications of sudden tempests, which, with ruthless violence, sweep over whole districts, carrying off or injuring all before them.

[Via]

Most contemporary representations of the harpy follow this early model, depicting the winged woman as a dangerous, hungry force of nature.



Some are scarier than others...

'Harpy' has also become a more general term for women who behave in an unacceptable manner towards men, who take too much and give too little, who 'harp on' about things.

As the Urban Dictionary's most popular definition puts it, a harpy is:

A word to describe a women [sic] who draws a man into her grasp by pleasing the victims biggest desire only to destroy all that makes him what he is.

Also:

A woman with an unbearable, shrewish, pain in the ass nature. In other words, a bitch or a harridan, especially a somewhat unappealing one.

Hmm.

[Via]

In her book The Female Grotesque, Mary Russo suggests that women who fly offer a model of deviance that constitutes a potentially transgressive "grotesque" performance. She is particularly interested in female circus performers, acrobats and pilots, whose activities transcend the imagined limits of the female body and mind.

[Stephanie Smith, human cannonball (2005). Via]

Russo wonders if "instances of aerial leaps and falls may suggest an alternative to the notion of liberation as upward mobility and flight forward," while simultaneously warning that "they end badly" (30). The woman who performs daring stunts, who throws herself off the edges of things and defies gravity, will often crash back down to earth.

I like the idea that stunts and falling are a function of agency, rather than a sign of its failure. As Russo points out, "freedom is often uncritically conceived as limitless space, transcendence, newness, individualism, and upward mobility of various kinds" (50). In contrast, falling involves "a reversal of the usual metaphors." It is downward mobility - a rough, even deadly encounter with limits and universals. Yet it results from attempts to go beyond safe zones, to risk unsanctioned moves and try new shapes. I fancy it is this spirit that infects the winged grotesques, with their ridiculous and impossible bodies.

Perhaps not such a bad thing, then, to be a harpy.

Although eating someone's parrot is going too far. Don't do it, ladies.

Scales

I suspect this post falls into the category of 'stream of consciousness' blogging, or 'things that remind you of other things that remind you of other things.'

Starting with:

A. The Single Woman.

I recently read Jill Reynolds' The Single Woman: A Discursive Investigation. It was quite interesting, although there weren't really enough (any) monsters or grotesques in it. Which is pretty much a requirement these days.

But it reminded me of:

B. Bridget Jones Diary.

Specifically, one of my favourite scenes in the film (along with the bit where Mr Darcy... er, that guy Mr Darcy is playing, wears the ugly jumper).

Smug Married: "Why is it there are so many unmarried women in their thirties these days, Bridget?"

Bridget: "Oh, I don't know. Suppose it doesn't help that underneath our clothes our entire bodies are covered in scales."

Which then reminded me of:

C. Species.

"Men cannot resist her. Mankind may not survive her."

"Beauty is only skin deep"

"Irresistible beauty. Unstoppable instincts."

Which made me think of:

D. Jennifer's Body.

[Via]

Which I haven't seen yet. It's on the list.

But that reminded me of:

E. Britain's Next Top Model.

Specifically the episode below, where the aspiring models are covered in blood for a horror themed photo shoot.




And all of the above surged into my head today while watching this:

F. Agatha Christie's Poirot.

I caught the end of an episode, where Poirot and Hastings are discussing the successful resolution of a case. The mystery was solved when Poirot revealed that two characters, the dowdy nurse and the stunning blond, were in fact the same person.

Hastings is deeply disconcerted. If a beautiful woman can make herself look drab, surely a drab woman could make herself look beautiful? Think of the ramifications! Poirot replies that this realisation is "the beginning of wisdom."

Et tu, Poirot?




Hmm.

Your Brain Looks Great Tonight

What do you get when you mix zombies with pinups? You get the My Zombie Pinup calendar by Robyn Malter & Shalaco Sching:

"A bi-product of the photographer’s sick sense of humor and ability to know how to run too far with a bad joke."

The images were all inspired by scenes from horror movies or classic pinups, and I love how they subvert both genres. Considering how often women are forced to scream and flee in horror/zombie films, it seems right that they should have their revenge.

[Via Monster Land]