#laqueur

Mason FX

"I’ve spent over a week on this enclosure - built up 10+ coats of lacquer - I lost count 😂 I loved this fabric and couldn’t cover this guys head - so I had to design this special faceplate for it which I think turned out really well. I’m glad I went with the tweed."

Lacqueur Tray with Horses

Japan

Les plus belles œuvres des artisans japonais.

“Boîte avec une cigale” - kobako 小箱

Petite boîte ornementale de forme rectangulaire ornée à l'extérieur d'une cigale, du début de l'automne, en or sur une feuille déchirée et colorée. En laque noire avec maki-e 蒔絵 et takamaki-e 高蒔絵, rehaussées d'or, d'argent et de couleurs , des paillettes de kirikane 切金 incrustées d'or sur les feuilles, le revers en laque nashiji 梨子地 en paillettes d'or et l'intérieur en de fins nuages ​​de la laque nashiji en paillettes d'or. Dimensions : 5,3 cm de haut  x 12,75 cm de long x 7,60 cm de profondeur

I'm going to try to place AH and his thoughts on marriage in context of the scholarly work on gender, sex, and the dynamic between men and women and gender in this period. One of the problems I have with lots of biographies of AH is that the authors read a 19th century attitude towards marriage, sexuality, and gender behavior back into AH's 18th century, aristocratic world. (And no one got the short end of the stick in this more than Elizabeth Hamilton, who was reduced to a kind and long-suffering wife confined to hearth and home. I take that back - Martha Washington was reduced to a plump granny with a tea cozy on her head.)

I'm going to briefly summarize very general material in gender studies below, and in future posts I’ll explore this as it relates to AH, specifically:

The perspective presented in literature that we know he was familiar with;

His attitudes towards women (how he describes his wife, his wife's sisters, Peggy Arnold, Maria Reynolds, in particular);

How he viewed and performed masculinity in the context of his society; 

Other topics TBD

Two of the most widely read - and controversial - scholars on the history of sex, Michel Foucault (The History of Sexuality, 1976-1984) and Thomas W. Laqueur (Making Sex: Bodies and Gender from Greeks to Freud, 1980), share the view that our current conventions of male/female, masculine/feminine are relatively novel constructions that were invented in the 18th-19th centuries. [I'm not going to get into Foucault other than this mention because his motivating concerns were really beyond those of sex and sexuality.]

Laqueur argues for the transformation of the understanding of sex from a one-sex model to a two-sex model in the 18th century. In the one-sex model, male and female only differ by degrees, not kind. Laqueur draws on classical texts and the use of Galen's work, whose medical texts again rose to prominence in the Renaissance and may have influenced midwifery, for his argument that female genitalia and function were thought to be homologous to male genitalia in both form and function, but inverted. For both, there is one metaphysical form - one sex.  Males, with their external genitalia because of their "heat", are nearer to this ideal form. Women are "cold," which explains why their genitalia are inside their bodies. But both women and men can carry "hot" and "cold," making them more masculine or feminine. During this era, female sexual pleasure also rises to prominence, as it is believed that women must have orgasms in order for procreation to occur - the belief in the female "seed" ejaculated during orgasm, to match the male seed that is ejaculated. (There's also lots of discussion about the identification and understanding of the clitoris as the homolog of the male penis.) In summary, Laqueur holds that in the 15th through 17th century, the male and female sex were understood on the same vertical axis, but they were of same form - one sex.

Please note - in no way are women held to be equal to men in the one-sex model. They are acknowledged to be subordinate - lower on the axis - and therefore corporal punishment of wives by husbands, denial of rights, etc., are all permissible. One can hold to a one-sex or two-sex understanding, and the resulting socially approved interactions between men and women may not look much different to an observer. Other scholars have studied and developed theories on gender performance in this time period as separate from anatomical form - how fluid and flexible the notions of masculine/feminine could be, with no corresponding concern about homosexuality. For a man to "act like a woman" means that he yields the dominant position and takes on a subordinate one. 

[Laqueur argues for a one-sex model all the way from antiquity into the 18th century. Many scholars have criticized this, and since I believe that they are correct in their criticisms - specifically, the Middle Ages had much greater diversity of thought on the matter than Laqueur simplifies it to - I am limiting my discussion to the Renaissance era onward, when many scholars do agree that one can see the prevalence of a one-sex model. Laqueur has also been criticized for largely drawing his material from isolated medical texts and parts of philosophical thought. Other scholars have argued that the two-sex model always existed alongside the one-sex model, and either could be employed. See Helen King, The One-Sex Body on Trial, 2013. I'm inclined to agree that Laqueur’s model is overly simplistic, though I would agree with him and Foucault that there's something uniquely afoot in the 18th-19th century.]

I think one can see a reflection of the popularity and demise of this one-sex construction in action in the arts. Many scholars have focused on examining the popularity of these sex models in literature; I'll briefly focus on two illustrative examples in the performing arts: 1) the castrato in Italian opera; 2) the male dansuer in ballet.

1) The 1650s-1750s are the height of the popularity of the castrati, male singers who were castrated as youths so that their vocal cords never lengthened. Having enormous vocal range - higher than sopranos in many cases - and flexibility, and having greater lung capacity than female singers, they were hugely popular in Italian operas throughout most of Europe (France being the notable exception). The expanse of opera seria gave the castrati a new avenue from which to display their talents. Castrati became so popular, they displaced not only women, but sometimes also uncastrated men on stage. They were given the "hero" male roles (people into Baroque opera know how frequently these roles are now usually played by female sopranos dressed in men's clothing).  What we may think of as their androgyny (some of the other consequences of youthful castration are smaller genitalia, longer limbs, and a round, tall build) and ambiguous sexuality was an enormous part of their appeal. As socioeconomic conditions in Italy changed - fewer disadvantaged families with numerous sons willing to sacrifice one to castration in hopes of producing an opera superstar - the supply of castrati may have ended well before demand for them decreased. (Some scholars have argued that is was the decline of the one-sex model that ushered in the end of the age of the castrati, but I don't believe that, and I know a lot about the castrato era and its popularity.)

2) Although the western classical dance tradition began in Italy in the 16th century, it became codified - under aesthetic ideals still applied - in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. In this era, the male danseur held the place of prominence in ballet, with its strict rules about presentation of the body, hands, and face, deportment, and carriage. That this was seen as a manly endeavor was commonly accepted (except in England!); for a man to feature those qualities that we usually associate as feminine - delicacy, grace, etc., was a more perfect comment on his manhood; he is the idealized one-sex metaphysical form. In the 19th century, we see the demise of the role of the danseur, and questions about the effeminacy of male performers - and their sexuality - with a corresponding emphasis on the female in pointe shoe, and femininity of dance.

So what happened? States Laqueur: "sometime in the eighteenth century, sex as we know it was invented. The reproductive organs went from being paradigmatic sites for displaying hierarchy, resonant throughout the cosmos, to being the foundation of [an] incommensurable difference [between men and women]." We arrive at the dominance of the two-sex model. Male and female were no longer on the same axis, with the difference only in degrees, but were now poles apart - true opposites. Male and female genitalia are seen as distinctly different in form and function. Laqueur argues that this shift in thinking occurred without a change in scientific understanding, which would come some decades later. 

So why the shift, if "science" isn't the cause? 

One of the pressures is certainly the shift in philosophical thought from the Enlightenment, with the setting of "nature" and “natural rights” rising to new prominence. But if “rights” are "natural" and "inalienable", why do they seem unequally applied to women, or enslaved persons, and/or natives? Well, there must be inherent differences between male and female, black and brown bodies. Some scholars argue that the institution of slavery itself precipitated this crisis -  the subjugation of black bodies requires a defense with biological and moral underpinnings that brings new focus to the difference between male and female. 

The "pursuit of happiness" ideal is also seen as one of the natural aims of man [and woman, some Locke scholars would say - they also make the argument that Locke was a believer in the one-sex model.] This helps drive companionate marriage, which I've mentioned previously and Hamilton by every measure believed strongly in. Companionate marriages are based on love and mutual attraction; they represent a break away from the old social order of lineage and family/economic ties as the drivers of marriage. For awhile, female sexual satisfaction is still of high importance. In a companionate marriage, the partners' feelings for each other dominate, creating an intimate bond that is exclusively between spouses.

When you combine this with the rise of the middle-class, pushed along by industrialization, companionate marriage becomes one of the drivers of what we recognize in the 19th century as the nuclear family: a solid unit consisting of husband and wife with their children. With the growth of opportunities [for whites] to participate and enter in the middle class and form nuclear families, gender distinctions become even more prominent. Male and female become distinct entities with different but complementary roles to play in society. Motherhood becomes the natural elevated destiny of all women. Women are placed as protectors of virtue, while men are the protectors of honor and character. Now, a man "acting like a woman" is not just an act of subordination or cowardice, but a violation of the natural order. Gender performance, which had been quite-flexible in previous centuries, starts to become very rigid.

I'll let Allen and Feluga take it over, because they state it better than I will**: 

The middle-class culture that came about in Britain and America as a result of urbanization, industrialization, and strong economic growth (which is to say, that could not have happened without the enlightenment) imagined itself as existing in two complementary but separate spheres: the public and the private. These spheres were roughly commensurate with the binary gender distinctions discussed above. The public sphere belonged to men: it was the sphere of business and money-making, of politics and empire building, of industry and struggle. The private sphere, on the other hand, was considered to be a feminine preserve: it was the space of the home and the hearth, of sympathy and nurture, of simple piety and childrearing. Men obviously crossed into the private sphere when they left their business for their homes where they were to be "softened" by the gentle ministrations of their dear home angels but women had limited access to the public sphere.

This double system underwrote a capitalist economic system by creating the home as a sphere of consumption rather than production and by creating the middle-class wife as a leisured consumer and it underwrote the middle-class ideal of a private domestic sphere that was untouched by the ravages of commerce. (You will immediately see the paradox in this.)

We can see how Hamilton's world (by world, I mean the sociocultural milieu he occupied) is marked by both the one-sex and two-sex models. There is an emphasis on preoccupations with clothing, grooming, dancing, witty conversation, art, elegance, even wine glasses - all that would become to be marked as "feminine" by the Anglo-American middle-class* in a couple of generations after him. Compare portraits of AH with the well-known portrait of his son, William S. Hamilton, to see how self-presentation had changed in just one generation. Scholars have argued that the style of dress in this period - tight breeches and stockings, cut of clothing that was used to highlight the male anatomical form, became popular as a way of asserting a masculine identity so that gender performance could remain varied.

Alexander Hamilton also took an active role in childcare, consulted with Elizabeth about child-rearing decisions, actively engaged in family planning, and had a love for home - all qualities that would read as “feminine” in just a couple of generations. 

I’ll abruptly stop here because this is long enough! I welcome any comments, questions, criticisms. This is more interpretation-heavy, and relies on sometimes controversial scholarship, than the posts I usually make.

*The Anglo-American middle-class as a separate identity to the upperclass; the former being the base of the Jacksonian Era of the Common Man, who was the Mountain Man, who became the Western Man, who is still exported as the Anglo-American ideal of manhood and masculinity - taciturn, loose-limbed but with swagger; the man who can conquer the wilderness.

**https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/genderandsex/modules/introduction.html

See also: http://www.isis.aust.com/stephan/writings/sexuality/euro.htm

Artisanat et poésie : 

byōbu-e 屏風絵 - paravent à 6 panneaux avec les poèmes de l’anthologie de poésie du  Kokin Wakashū 古今和 歌集 ou Kokinshū 古今集 - 1ère Anthologie de waka 和歌.

Hon'ami Kōetsu本阿弥光悦 (1558 –1637).

Les plus belles œuvres des artisans japonais.

boîte à écrire en laque japonaise, suzuribako 硯箱 , signée et scellée, 

Shibata Zeshin 柴田是真 (1807 - 1891).

Lacquer Paintings of Various Subjects : “Drum for gagaku dance” & “Sencha tea set painting”

Shibata Zeshin 柴田是真 (1807 - 1891).

makimono 巻物 - “Animal story” de