Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Women in Cotten and Queenpin
The portrayal of women in Queenpin and Cotton Comes to Harlem is something I've been thinking about lately. In Cotton the women are used so vulgarly as sexual beings, while some of them tend to have strong personalities it seems whenever a women is discussed sex must be mentioned. Then when it comes to Queenpin sex is used again in a vulgar manor as our main character can't get enough of it and it drives her insane. Yet the whole time Gloria is trying to teach her "how to keep her legs closed" while in cotton women use their sexuality as a tool. So which is more effective? The women who use their celibacy as a weapon or the women who use their bodies as a tool? I think refraining from sex is what helps them the most, sex for women makes them seem weaker and uncontrollable even though it works to their advantage at times. When it boils down to it women cannot be respected by men if sex is put on the table I think in these two novels.
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Interesting point. Although, I'm not sure I would agree that Gloria's respect derives from her celibacy or whatever. There is, after all, that rumor about her, as Dr Lukin phrased it, “servicing a bunch of guys,” and yet she still seems to garner a lot of respect from everyone. I think it's more that being celibate maybe makes her inhuman to some extent, or at least alienates her from the other sort of hyper-masculine members of her trade.
ReplyDeleteConversely, the narrator's profuse sexuality definitely comes across as a point of weakness insofar as it leaves her in a compromising position with Vic and, by extension, Gloria. Gloria's abstinence protects her from situations like this, but it also leaves her seeming a bit hollow. Like, what, besides her fancy car and glittery clothes, does she care about? Her interactions with the narrator seem, on the whole, pretty superficial – they talk business a lot, and share meals, but thats about it. In this way, maybe she's a bit like Tom- all about the money and respect, but no social/interpersonal/etc aspirations beyond shaping the way others see her? I don't know. I also saw some peer-reviewed piece that suggested homosexuality on Gloria's part but, after the Ripley debate, I'm kind of too burned out on that line of thinking to consider reading it.
When Gloria is asked about the rumor, she informs the narrator that the rumor was about her ex-friend. So I don' think that it was Gloria. It seems as though when she is discussing things with the narrator she is pretty open, as when she told her about the burn. I don't think she was lying.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't think refraining from sex makes a person hollow or inhuman. Choosing to avoid relationships also doesn't make a person hollow. I know that there are plenty of people who choose to avoid sexual/emotional relationships. It doesn't make them a dead inside. It's a choice. And in Gloria's line of work, I think its a smart one. Not everyone wants the life of getting married and having kids.
I definitely agree that women can't be respected in these situations if sex is on the table. Perhaps if the male involved wasn't so closely related to the business as Vic was it wouldn't have been as much of a problem.
I think both of these novels demonstrate the catch-22 for a lot of women pretty well. If a woman uses her sexual prowress to her advantage she is at risk for being labeled a weak and at risk for not being taken seriously. At the same time though, women may feel the need to use their sexuality as a weapon since they may lack the physical strength that some men can use to their advantage and are just trying to have some powerful influence in any way they can, which I think is demonstrated by the narrator’s character in Queenpin. In Cotton Comes to Harlem, one of the criminals uses his sexual prowress to steal money from women, cutting their clothes off and stealing the purses hanging between their legs. He uses sexuality as a tool to get what he wants, but he is not readily perceived as weak (even though it seems that he is specifically stealing from women in compromising positions to decrease the risk of counteractive violence against him). I don’t think that Gloria necessarily uses her celibacy as a tool but I do think she consciously makes a decision to stay celibate because she knows men will take her more seriously, respect her more, and see her as an equal (since men cannot typically use their sexuality to get what they want). At the same time, she is not a true equal because she does not get the privilege to assert her sexuality in other, private areas of her life like her male counterparts can since a woman’s sexuality is tied up into her persona no matter what (the fault of years of sexism claiming that females are the inferior sex); she feels she must give up her sexuality totally to prove that she doesn’t need it to become successful. Of course, if she doesn't want to engage in sex at all, then this is all fine, but if she does and has to suppress this desire then she is giving up a part of herself to conform to the unrealistic ideals of others. Because she is a woman and I guess women in noir can’t escape from being seen as sex objects (that seems to be one of their main functions), her sexuality is automatically assumed to be tied up into her public/career persona, but really she shouldn’t even have to consider whether to use her sexuality or not to further her career since it has nothing to do with how well she can perform her job. The question of how sexual a man can or cannot be and how he uses sex to further his career is never discussed until he is caught having sex on the job or if he is a homosexual man who doesn’t conform to heterosexist notions of what a man needs to do to succeed (as demonstrated by Tom Ripley’s character). Women don’t have this same privilege in the world of noir (since a lot of it has pretty misogynistic undertones) so Abbott may have created a character like Gloria to demonstrate that women can be successful if they refuse to be seen as sex objects. Perhaps the narrator wants to go to the far extreme and rebel against this puritanical standard of female sexuality because she already acts entitled and feels like she doesn’t need to prove herself in real, legitimate ways like Gloria did. The narrator almost uses her passivity as a tool, subverting notions that a woman must be as/more tough than a man to make it in the crime world. I think it is interesting that Abbott juxtaposes a seemingly good role model of Gloria against a bad role model of the narrator. Of course, both are meant to be seen as bad in the real world because they are criminals but the narrator seems to admire Gloria because she is a better role model than a lot of other passive, unambitious women who are not criminals.
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