Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair: Notes on the Vinok

A Ukranian beauty wearing traditional clothes

and a spectacular floral headdress

The penchant for wearing flowers in one's hair was not, of course, something that originated in San Francisco during the Summer of Love; peoples all around the world have been adorning themselves in this fashion for millennia. However, I'm particularly fascinated (at the moment) by the Ukranian floral headdress known in English as the vinok.

Traditionally worn by girls and unmarried women, the vinok has its origins in fertility rites that pre-date Christianity. Signifying virginity, the vinok was also believed to offer protection against evil spirits and followers of Slavic neopaganism - known as Rodnovery - continue to attach magical significance to the vinok.

Whilst mostly worn on festive occasions and holy days, since the 2014 Ukranian revolution the vinok has been increasingly worn in daily life as an expression of national pride and völkisch identity. This might cause concern amongst those suspicious of reactionary populism in Europe. However, it might be noted that the vinok is also often worn by the topless activists of Femen, for whom it signifies a new, insubordinate and heroic model of femininity.*

It might also be noted, finally, that the vinok has influenced the world of fashion and featured in several recent catwalk collections, including the Comme des Garçons Homme Plus Spring 2016 menswear collection, where models wore botanical crowns in a show entitled Armour of Peace:

* Note: it's not coincidental, of course, that although now based in Paris, Femen was founded in the Ukraine and is still led by a Ukranian woman, Inna Shevchenko. Readers might like to know that the Femen Flower Crown - handmade by activists - is available to buy for €35.00 on the Femen website: click here.

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom: On the Genealogy of Hippie Morals

Pippa McManus: Crazy Daisy Dreams (2017)

Flower Child Group Exhibition (12 Aug - 2 Sept 2017)

Modern Eden Gallery (San Francisco)

I. Summers of Love and Hate

As a punk rocker, the symbolism of the zip and safety pin means more to me than that of the groovy floral designs so beloved of the hippie generation. However, as the Summer of Hate is now as much part of ancient cultural history as the Summer of Love, it's easier to view both events with critical perspective and concede that wearing flowers in one's hair is probably preferable to having to remove spittle.

And, of course, as a floraphile, I very much approve of intimate relationships between plants and people and can see how one might wish to develop a green neo-pagan politics upon a love of flora - although, personally, I've no desire for universal peace and love and refuse to accept that flowers can only symbolise such benevolent (and naive) idealism.    


II. If You're Going to San Francisco ...

Back in '67, San Francisco was the epicentre of the hippie counterculture, a movement mostly composed of privileged white youths who temporarily dropped out and experimented with drugs, sex, and alternative lifestyles, before moderating their views and dropping back in again as corporate yuppies in the 1980s à la Jerry Rubin.           

Thanks to a strong economy, the hippies were able to spend their time getting stoned, listening to psychedelic music, reading Allen Ginsberg,* protesting against the Man, dreaming of revolution and generally indulging their narcissism. Some formed communes and attempted to live as far outside mainstream society as possible. It's easy to mock and tempting to despise these idealists with flowers in their hair, but they have had (for better or for worse) a wide and lasting impact and many of their ideas and values are now part of the liberal orthodoxy.

Interestingly, the American author Robert Anton Wilson suggests that the hippies can be characterised as unearthly angels whose psychology manifests friendly weakness. Such people are kind, passive, generous and trusting. But they are also easily led and secretly in search of authority (which might explain the obsession with gurus and, indeed, why Charles Manson was able to wield such control over his extended Family of followers).  


III. On the Genealogy of Hippie Morals

I say their values, but, as the sociologist Bennett Berger pointed out at the time, there's nothing very new or uniquely hippie about the morality of the flower children. Their movement was merely another expression of the 19th-century bohemianism that the literary critic Malcolm Cowley had reduced to a relatively formal doctrine with several key ideas, some of which we might (briefly) summarise as follows:

(i) Only a Child Can Save Us

This first point, found in Christianity and Romanticism as well as flower power philosophy, continues to resonate today; thus the astonishing rise to global fame of Greta Thunberg, for example. The idea is that the innocent child is born with special potentialities which are systematically repressed by society. If they could only be left to blossom naturally and develop their personalities, then the world might yet be saved and humanity redeemed. 

(ii) Express Yourself (Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey)

When hippies claim the right to do their own thing, they are, of course, simply reviving the idea that the moral duty of each person is to express themselves and realise their full potential as individuals via some form of creative activity. Or smoking weed. Madonna was still churning out such bullshit twenty years after the Summer of Love.       

(iii) Paganism Good / Christianity Bad

The idea that paganism is a happy, innocent worship of the natural world that regards the body as a temple in which there is nothing unclean, whilst Christianity, in contrast, is a morally repressive and anti-sexual religion is one that I used to subscribe to myself. But then I read Michel Foucault on power, pleasure, and Christian ascesis and realised that things aren't so simple; that the difference between Graeco-Roman (i.e. pagan) and early Christian forms of self-disciplining cannot be established in terms of a fundamental distinction or dialectic. Ultimately, even the Nietzschean binary of Dionysus versus the Crucified has to be deconstructed.    

(iv) Seize the Day, Man

The idea of living spontaneously and for the moment is crucial to hippie philosophy; the immediacy of the present or the nowness of the Now is where it's at; the past and future are just abstractions and what D. H. Lawrence calls the quick of time is contained only in the instant. We have the Roman poet Horace to thank for this: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero ...  But whether it's ever very wise listening to a poet (or Robin Williams) is debatable; doesn't it all just end in the sanctioned hedonism of consumer society and a Nike slogan?

(v) Free Love

Ah, the so-called sexual revolution of the sixties ... Again, part of a long tradition carried on by individuals who objected to the state having any say over matters such as marriage, contraception, sexual orientation, etc. What an individual chose to do with his or her body was, they argued, entirely up to them. The great hope was that sexual liberation would lead to greater freedom in all spheres of life and bring about profound social, political, and cultural change. Again, I used to subscribe to this, but then I read Foucault and realised that the politics of desire involves a naive and mistaken understanding of sex, power, and subjectivity thanks to our unquestioning belief in what he terms the repressive hypothesis.   

(vi) Romantic Primitivism and Exotic Otherness 

Finally, the hippies were of course anti-Western and believed that spiritual enlightenment either lay in Asia (and involved transcendental meditation and taking lots of drugs), or with native Americans who combined tribal wisdom with noble savagery. Embarrassingly, I also used to buy into this in my Kings of the Wild Frontier/Nostalgia of Mud period. But now, I'm wise to the culture cult and refuse the tyranny of guilt identified by Pascal Buckner.

Indeed, now, not only would I never trust a hippie, I'd never trust a punk, pagan, or poet either (even though I used to self-identify as a combination of all three during the 1980s).

* Note: In an essay written in 1965, Ginsberg advocated that anti-war rallies should become non-violent spectacles and that hippie protesters should be provided with masses of flowers to be handed out to political opponents, police, press, and members of the public. Thanks to activists like Abbie Hoffman, this idea of flower power quickly spread and became an important expression of hippie ideology. It also led to some iconic images, as flower-wielding protesters were confronted by armed force.

See: 

Bennett M. Berger, 'Hippie morality - more old than new', Society, Vol. 5, Issue 2 (December, 1967), pp. 19-27. Note that Society was entitled Transaction at this time.

Malcolm Cowley, Exiles Return, (W. W. Norton, 1934). The Penguin edition (1994), ed. Donald W. Faulkner, is perhaps more readily available.

Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising, (Falcon Press, 1983), p. 55. 

Play: San Francisco, sung by Scott McKenzie, written by John Phillips, (Ode Records, May 1967), the unofficial anthem of the flower power generation: click here. It's a pleasant enough tune, but like Sid Vicious I was busy playing with my Action Man whilst all this was going on.

    

On Essex Girls and Eyelashes

Image via whisper.sh

I.

Essex is home to many things, including a huge number of beauty salons offering eyelash extensions; there's at least a dozen such venues in Romford alone. It's hardly surprising, therefore, to see numerous young women walking around with cosmetically-enhanced lashes that make me open my own eyes wide with astonishment.    

The funny thing is, after prolonged exposure to these and other essential elements of an Essex girl's look - spray tans, sculpted brows, big hair - one starts to appreciate the defiantly artificial, high maintenance and rather exotic aesthetic. 

In fact, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine (or remember) other looks and I fear that if my exile continues for much longer I'll succumb to the belief that the only way is Essex. For the look is not only exaggerated in a porno-cartoonish manner, it's compelling in its flawlessness. Some people like to sneer at Essex girls and deride the look, but this is mostly a mixture of snobbery and envy.      

II.

Having expressed my concern that I'm potentially at risk of becoming enamoured with Essex girls, the truth is I'm probably immune because I don't tie my understanding of beauty to an idea that bigger is always better when it comes to breasts, lips, or, indeed, eyelashes.

Ultimately, I prefer the idea of queering or perverting beauty rather than simply enhancing or augmenting it. Thus, for example, I prefer those women - few in number and not often encountered on the 174 - who do a bit more with their lashes than simply lengthen and thicken them.

For example: women who choose to wear mink eyelashes encrusted with diamonds; or women who wear paper eyelashes inspired by the art of Chinese paper-cutting; or women who wear eyelashes made from colourful bird feathers or flower petals; or women, finally, who would dare to wear the flylashes (below) made by British artist Jessica Harrison from the legs of dead flies.*
  

* For details and images of these plus several other designs see: '10 Strangest Eyelash Extensions', posted by Ruth on Oddee (12 Feb 2011): click here.

The Portrait of Madame X

John Singer Sargent: Portrait of Madame X (1884) 

Oil on canvas (92" x 43")

I. Opening Remarks

Whilst I appreciate that the American artist John Singer Sargent has great technical ability, I've never been particularly interested in him or his work. Indeed, of the estimated 900 canvases he produced in oil, there's really one that captures my attention: his painting of a young socialite, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, known as the Portrait of Madame X. 

Submitted to the Salon in 1884, this risqué and experimental work was intended to consolidate his growing reputation as a society painter. But, as we shall see, the picture aroused a hostile reaction from the critics and resulted in a public scandal.

II.  Before Madonna, There Was Virginie Gautreau

Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau was born in New Orleans, but grew up from the age of eight in France, where she became a socialite known for her unnaturally pale-skinned beauty and hour-glass figure. Although married to a wealthy banker and businessman, Virginie was happy to receive (and encourage) amorous attention from numerous other men. Indeed, her extramarital affairs were the subject of much popular gossip.

It was through one of her wealthy lovers that Virginie was introduced to Sargent, who, keen to advance his own career by capitalizing on her notoriety, pleaded with her to sit for him. She eventually agreed - they were both ambitious American expats after all - and invited him to her home in Brittany. Here, despite his model's lack of discipline and very obvious boredom with the entire process, Sargent made numerous studies in pencil, watercolour and oil - including the work that today hangs in the Met.


III. The Portrait of Madame X

As with many images that caused controversy in late-19th century society, it's difficult for us now to understand what all the fuss was about. But the suggestively coquettish pose and the revealing black satin dress worn by Mme. Gautreau provoked a huge hullabaloo at the time.

One critic wrote that to stand before such a portrait was to instantly be offended (if not, indeed, morally contaminated). What a woman may get up to in her private life was one thing - but to flaunt the fact of her infidelity in public ... Well, that was another matter entirely. Sargent was accused of not only defying artistic convention, but outraging public decency.

Virginie's mother decided she had to intervene; she persuaded her daughter to retire from society until the scandal blew over and she asked Sargent to remove the picture from the Salon. He refused, but did agree to change the title to that which it has been known ever since: The Portrait of Madame X.

He would also, later, when the picture was back in his studio, reposition the fallen right shoulder strap of the dress, rendering the work significantly less provocative - though it was a bit late by then, as the damage to his reputation and to hers had already been done.

Sargent made the wise decision to move to London, as it was clear that he would receive no more portrait commissions in France anytime soon. And it was in England - and later America - that he really made his name. But, by his own admission many years later, he never painted anything better than The Portrait of Madame X.

Notes

Readers interested in seeing The Portrait of Madame X for themselves will find it on display in Gallery 771 at the Met Fifth Avenue. For more details, click here. An earlier, unfinished version of the work is in the Tate collection, but not presently on display: click here for details.

Coincidently, Madame X is the title of the fourteenth studio album just released by Madonna (Interscope Records, 2019). However, the title is neither a reference to Mme. Gautreau nor Sargent's portrait. Madonna claims that she was given the name Madame X at the age of 19 by a dance teacher whom she perplexed due to her constantly changing image and identity. 

Finally, readers may be interested in a recent post on Rita Hayworth wearing a dress by the French-born American costume designer Jean Louis for the film Gilda (1946), which drew inspiration from Sargent's Portrait of Madame X. Click here.   

The Naked Look: In Praise of the Backless / Strapless Dress

Rita Hayworth as Gilda wearing the iconic 
black dress designed by Jean Louis

Being something of an omosophile, I've always had a thing for necks, shoulders, and bare backs - though would draw the line at the buttocks (I'm not much of a pygophile). I am, therefore, a fan of the backless dress, which - if I recall my fashion history correctly - first appeared in the Roaring Twenties and was designed to expose the above areas of the female body to stunning effect.

Of course, the amount of flesh revealed varies with the style of dress. Personally, I'm not too fussed how low it's cut as long as the neck and shoulders are naked and the dress is held up either with ultra-thin spaghetti straps that look as if they might break at any moment, or fastened, halterneck style, with a strap that passes from the front of the garment and behind the wearer's neck where it's covered by her hair, thus creating the happy illusion from behind that the dress is kept in place simply by the grace of God or a gravity-defying act of will.  

If a woman chooses to wear a bra with such a dress it obviously has to be strapless. But daring to go bra-free is probably the best option and adds to the dangerous appeal of the dress - something which is even further enhanced if the latter itself is of a strapless variety, without any visible means of support.

There are, I know, many women who secretly long to wear such a dress, but worry about exposing rather more than intended should it suddenly slip south. However, those concerned about the practicality of wearing a risqué strapless number might find some reassurance watching Rita Hayworth in a famous scene from the classic film noir Gilda (1946), in which she wears an iconic strapless design by Jean Louis, inspired by Sargent's Portrait of Madame X (1884).

As demonstrated - to the disappointment of the men in the audience - the tightness of the bodice prevents the dress from falling off, even when she's singing, dancing, and performing an erotic striptease of the hand with some enthusiasm.

The dress - a black satin sheath with a straight neckline leaving the shoulders, arms and upper-back all beautifully bare - helped consolidate Hayworth's image as a femme fatale and was said to illustrate that unrestrained female sexuality ultimately leads to catastrophe. It's not merely coincidental, therefore, that the first nuclear bomb to be tested after the Second World War was nicknamed Gilda and decorated with an image of Rita wearing her notorious black dress. 

For added good measure, the floor-length dress also has a thigh-high slit, so we can fully appreciate the fact that Gilda's got legs (and knows how to use 'em). Finally, it will be noted that the dress is worn with a pair of matching full-length gloves, pushing the fetishistic appeal of the scene to the maximum. Illicit lovers of every stripe can find something to perv on in this scene.       

Of course, it goes without saying that all the usual suspects who like to decry the immodesty of fashion, bemoan the objectification of the female body, or condemn the half-naked women of today for cynically exploiting their sexuality, have attacked the backless/strapless dress. However, the ravings of such puritans need not detain us here ... 

See: Rita Hayworth as Gilda performing the number 'Put the Blame on Mame' (written by Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher) in the film Gilda (dir. Charles Vidor, 1946): click here. Note: it's not actually Miss Hayworth singing; the voice belongs rather to Anita Ellis. 
  

Thanks for the Memory (Notes on Hope and Heidegger)

Thanks for the memory / Of faults that you forgave

Of rainbows on a wave / And stockings in the basin

When a fellow needs a shave ...*

I.

Bob Hope was an Anglo-American actor and comedian whose career spanned almost 80 years. He appeared in more than 70 movies, starring in 54 full-length feature films, including seven Road movies alongside Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour.

Whether he ever read - or even knew the name - Martin Heidegger is not certain: but I doubt it. The latter wasn't particularly known for his witty one-liners. Having said that, it's equally doubtful that the German philosopher was a fan of Hope's, although I suspect he might have smiled at his signature tune ...

II.

Thanks for the Memory is a popular song composed by Ralph Rainger, with lyrics by Leo Robin, for the film The Big Broadcast of 1938 (dir. Mitchell Leison) and starring - amongst others - Bob Hope and Shirley Ross, who perform it [click here].

It won the Academy Award for best original song and has regularly featured on the American Film Institute's list of top 100 cinematic tunes. But that's not why I think Heidegger may have had a sneaky regard for it.

That, rather, relates to the fact that the song title - which in German reads Danke für die Erinnerung - could easily have been lifted from his work, as it neatly summarises his idea that thinking is both poetic recollection and an act of gratitude: Denken ist Danken, as he liked to say (having picked the phrase up from 17th century pietism).

In order to explain what he means by this we need to turn to his brilliant series of lectures published as Was Heißt Denken? (1954) ...  


III.

In What Is Called Thinking?, Heidegger pays homage to Mnemosyne [Μνημοσύνη], the daughter of Heaven and Earth, bride of Zeus, mother of the nine Muses, and goddess of memory.

It is clear, says Heidegger, knowing his ancient Greek mythology and having read his Hölderlin, that the latter term - memory - means "something else than merely the psychologically demonstrable ability to retain a mental representation, an idea, of something which is past" [11].  

Memory is a special type of thought:

"Memory is the gathering and convergence of thought upon what everywhere demands to be thought about first of all. Memory is the gathering of recollection, thinking back. It safely keeps and keeps concealed within it that to which at each given time thought must be given before all else, in everything that essentially is, everything that appeals to us as what has being and has been in being. Memory [...] the thinking back to what is to be thought is the source and ground of poiesis.** This is why poiesis is the water that at times flows backward toward the source, toward thinking as a thinking back, a recollection. [...] Poetry wells up only from devoted thought thinking back, recollecting." [11]  

And thinking-as-memory understood in relation to and in terms of poiesis, is also a way of giving thanks, which we understand once we know that the words think and thank have the same etymological root. In Old English, for example, the verbs thencan (to think) and thancian (to thank), are closely related and the Old English noun for thought, thanc, surely places gratitude at the heart of thinking.

Heidegger describes thanc as the great clue-word. But it means something very different from the modern word thought, which usually involves ideas and opinions: "Compared with the root thanc, thought in the sense of logical-rational representations turns out to be a reduction and an impoversishment of the word that beggar the imagination." [139] 

Thanc is more a word of the heart than the head; i.e., "that innermost essence of man which reaches outward most fully and to the outermost limits" [144].

This might all feel a bit contrived. But it seems a brilliant observation to me that invites us to think further about the relationship between the words thinking, thanking, and memory. For what these words designate "is incomparably richer in essential content than the current signification that the words still have for us in common usage" [142].   

And further, Hedegger's work obliges us to hear Bob Hope's signature tune with new ears. In giving thanks for the memories, Hope is giving thanks for the many gifts he has received; from the love of a good woman to the gift of being. That is to say, for all the things - great and small - that he cares for and that touch him as a human being, defining and determining his nature:

"If we understand memory in the light of the old word thanc, the connection between memory and thanks will dawn on us at once. For in giving thanks, the heart in thought recalls where it remains gathered and concentrated, because that is where it belongs." [145]     

See: Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? trans. J. Glenn Gray, (Harper Perennial, 2004). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition. 

*Note: I have slightly modified the translation here. Gray's use of the word poesy for ποίησις just feels wrong to me, so have replaced it with poiesis (which seems a little less literary and a bit more philosophical).  

Thanks for the Memory lyrics © Sony/TATV Music Publishing LLC

On the Verb to Elaborate (Or What I Have in Common With Jacques Derrida)

I.

One of the things I most disliked about presenting papers to an audience, was the fact that the latter invariably felt themselves entitled to ask questions afterwards.

And the most annoying of all questions was being asked to elaborate on some point ... Meaning, could I provide more details, or further examples. Could I - in other words - just work a little bit harder and, in answering their question, not only negate the carefully constructed ambiguity of the text, but effectively do their thinking for them.

I hate the expectation that things must be worked out and all problems solved, contradictions overcome, etc. Do people not see that to explain an idea is to level it and thus provide a safe foundation for thinking? As a Nietzschean, my aim was always to refine ideas to the point at which they become dangerous and unstable, shifting like desert sands ...


II.

Happily, I can find support for this from the king of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, who, in a filmed interview with Amy Ziering Kofman, says that one of the first things he noticed when teaching at an American university (back in 1956) was that people would quite casually ask one another - both in a social and an academic context - Could you please elaborate on X, Y, or Z? Here's a word - now get to work!

Students, for example, would visit his office and expect him to philosophise on the spot, as it were. Something, says Derrida, that just wouldn't happen at a French university; not because French students are more reserved or polite, but because the expectation that a thinker can and should always elaborate, doesn't exist in France.

Of course, that's not to say no one ever requests more information in France. But it's far less common and the people who do demand such tend to be manipulative journalists who are always in a hurry and looking to lead the interviewee into saying something rash or foolish. Derrida is scornful of individuals who think that because someone is a philosopher, they can ask them to speak about being at the drop of a hat, or act as if they can push a button and voila! be given an instant discourse on love. 

As he says, it simply doesn't work like that: any genuine philosopher will hesitate in answering even the most straightforward of questions. Not because they wish to appear vague or obscure, but because they have nothing ready-made. They're not comedians always happy to do a bit or perform a short routine; nor are they politicians who always stick to a script and thereby attempt to stay on-message.  


Note: Although, as far as I recall, the scene discussed here doesn't appear in the final edit of the movie, I'm assuming it was an outtake from  Derrida (2002), a documentary film dir. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. Anyway, readers who are interested can click here to watch the interview; or here to watch the film in full.   

Two Blue Birds: D. H. Lawrence's Take on the Phenomenon of the Office Wife

A secretary offers the only kind of polygamy we 
recognize in this country. - Helen Gurley Brown

I.

Lawrence's short story of 1927 entitled 'Two Blue Birds' belongs to both a sociological history and a literary sub-genre all of its own. Certainly the idea of a love triangle between a man, his wife and his secretary wouldn't have been new or at all shocking. Indeed, what's most surprising here is that Lawrence desexualises the relationship.

From the day that women entered into employment alongside men, the idea that this would lead to extramarital affairs was present and the jokes, stories, and saucy postcards began to immediately circulate. The secretary quickly assumed her place within the pornographic imagination alongside other stereotypical female figures, such as the waitress and librarian, for example.   

The phrase office wife dates to the 1920s, so there's a good chance Lawrence would have known of it - particularly as he spent a good deal of time in the United States. What he could not have known, however, was the popular novel of this title by Faith Baldwin published in the year of his death; or the Warner Bros. movie, directed by Lloyd Bacon, based on Baldwin's novel and also released in 1930.

In brief, an office wife refers to a secretary with whom a man shares a very special relationship. As we shall see, Miss Wrexall becomes a second wife to her boss, Cameron Gee. Not only does she spend many long hours working closely with him, bur she intuitively understand his personal needs and the pressures he was under, genuinely caring for his health and happiness.

I think we might legitimately speak of the propinquity effect in this case. And of sublimated desire, that is channeled into their queer-platonic collaboration, much to the wife's disgust (like many women in her position, she could accept her husband having a sexual affair, but not the strange intimacy of his relationship with Miss Wrexall).      


II.

The handsome writer Cameron Gee asked his adoring secretary to do things "in that good-natured, confident voice of a man who knows that his request will be only too gladly fulfilled". Not that he ever asked her to do anything inappropriate. For whilst Miss Wrexall was quite young and quite good-looking - and whilst he absolutely depended on her - he didn't desire her in that way:

"They were just the young master and his secretary. He dictated to her, she slaved for him and adored him, and the whole thing went on wheels."

Nevertheless, his estranged wife despises Miss Wrexall, whom she regards as competent, but common. Naturally, this rather complicated matters. And like many secretaries before her, Miss Wrexall found herself at times having to manage not only her boss, but placate and reassure her boss's wife.

Ultimately, the two women are locked into a battle and the question is: Who does more for this clever, enigmatic and whimsical man? Perhaps the wife already knew the answer to this in her heart. She may technically have the husband, "but a husband is the mere shred of a man, compared to a boss, a chief, a man who dictates" and whose every word a secretary will faithfully take down.   

The wife grows increasingly resentful. All the lovers and long winter vacations in the world don't help her forget her husband dictating to Miss Wrexall for ten hours a day "with nothing but a pencil between them: and a flow of words".

Worse! The secretary had brought her mother and sister into the household: the former as a sort of cook and housekeeper; the latter as a sort of maid and valet-de-chambre. Both provided an excellent service and soon all three women knew their master's affairs and personal tastes. Best of all, they hardly accepted any wages.   

For the wife, of course, had helped push the man into debt. And it was up to Miss Wrexall, his secretary, to smooth things over whenever a creditor became dangerous and threatened to trigger a financial crisis. But the secretarial family still received the wife when she came home "with most elaborate attentions and deference", though this only made her feel ridiculous.

"Could anything be more impossible! They had the house spotless and running like a dream: how could an incompetent and extravagant wife dare to interfere, when she saw their amazing and almost inspired economy!"

The man, if not perfectly happy, was nevertheless perfectly comfortable. Only his wife suspects that such comfort is not good for him. Or his work. It wasn't so much the home-cooked food and a soft bed that were the issue; his comfort, rather, consisted of having "nobody, absolutely nobody and nothing, to contradict him". His secretary prided herself on the fact that she spared him any aggravation.

At night, the wife could hear her husband dictate and she "imagined the little figure of the secretary busily scribbling shorthand". Then, in the sunny hours of the following morning, "from another distance came that sharp insect-noise of the typewriter, like some immense grasshopper chirping and rattling".

The wife thinks to herself:

"That girl - she was only twenty-eight - really slaved herself to skin and bone. She was small and neat, but she was acually worn out. She did far more work than he did, for she had to not only take down all those words he uttered, she had to type them out, make three copies, while he was still resting."

And for what? A very poor salary - and she doesn't even receive his kisses (though whether his never kissing her made things better or worse for the secretary, the wife could not decide). But she and her family adored him and were devoted to him. Only such uncritical adoration and devotion was subtly undermining the quality of his writing: "His whole tone was going down, becoming commoner."

The wife felt she ought to do something to save him and his reputation as an author. She wanted to destroy the perfectly devoted secretarial family and "sweep them into oblivion". But what, really, could she do? There was nothing to be done. But still she had to do something ... things could not go on as they were.

The wife, with her long and shapely she-wolf legs, was determined to defeat the dark-haired little secretary with "the pretty but rather common little feet". The latter is rightly terrified by the "queer, powerful, elegant, wolf-like figure of the wife".

One day, in the garden, the wife challenges the secretary; she wants to know why she's so self-effacing and never considers her own needs - why it is she doesn't have the man pay her more heed. This is said in front of the husband, leaving him looking "pained and somewhat remote".

As for the secretary, she hung her head and felt indignant that the purity of her relationship with him had been insulted: "But soon she was veering downstream on the flow of his words, too busy to have any feelings, except one of elation at being so busy." 

Later, at teatime, the wife reappears in the garden and insists that Miss Wrexall join her and her husband for tea. Both women are wearing chicory-blue dresses. The wife again rather cruelly puts the secretary on the spot with her irony and her questions. Miss Wrexall knows very well that the wife is trying to embarrass her and make her feel foolish, despite the latter's insistence that this isn't the case and that nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.

Mrs. Gee teasingly suggests that her husband's books read as if they were not merely typed but actually written in large part by Miss Wrexall. This annoys him and Miss Wrexall finally finds the courage to speak up, accusing the wife of wanting to ruin the relationship between herself and the man:

"'You want to spoil what there is between me and him, I can see that,' she said bitterly.
       'My dear, but what is there between you and him?' asked the wife.
'I was happy working with him, working for him! I was happy working for him!' cried Miss Wrexall, tears of indignant anger and chagrin in her eyes.'"

Of course, the wife protests (with simulated excitement) that she wants Miss Wrexall to go on being happy and to continue working for her husband. That the only issue she has is with him, for being an exploitative employer. But Miss Wrexall, being the perfect secretary - fiercely loyal and protective of her boss and full of what the Marxists call false consciousness - replies: "'But he gives me everything, everything!'"   

Naturally, the wife wants to know what this everything means and just how all-inclusive it is: "'I mean nothing that you need begrudge me,' said the little secretary rather haughtily. 'I've never made myself cheap.'"

This provokes the wife to explode with contempt: "'My God! [...] You don't call that being cheap? Why, I should say you got nothing out of him at all, you only give! And if you don't call that making yourself cheap - my God! -'"

However, Mrs. Gee has finally realised that the game is up and her sham marriage over; that it was time she left for good: "'I'm afraid no man can expect two blue birds of happiness to flutter round his feet: tearing out their little feathers!'"

And with that she walked away ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Two Blue Birds', The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 5-18. All lines quoted are from this edition of the text. An ebook version of the tale can be found online (thanks to the University of Adelaide) by clicking here.

For a secretarial sister post to this one, click here.

Notes on the Sexy, Secret, Stereotyped World of the Secretary

Select her carefully and she'll prove the loveliest 

and most valuable of all fringe benfits. - Helen Gurley Brown

I. 

As Derrida notes, the rise of the personal computer has made the figure of the secretary structurally redundant. Only those who wish to continue marking "the authority of their position" still insist on hiring a secretary, even when they could quite easily do the work themselves on their laptop. 

Why should that be? 

Well, partly, it's a sign of status to sit behind a machine-free desk and reconstitute the old-fashioned boss-secretary relationship, passing over hand-written notes to by typed, or dictating whilst some bright young thing practises her shorthand. As Derrida says, power in the workplace has to be mediated, if not delegated, in order to (be seen to) exist.

But, there's also something else going on; something to do with desire and the way in which it infiltrates and directly invests even the most formal and professional of workplaces as a kind of productive energy. 

The fact is, argue Deleuze and Guattari, sexuality is everywhere - not least in the offices and boardrooms of big business. It's in the way a bureaucrat fondles the files; an accountant analyses the financial data; and it's there in the relationship between a male boss and his female secretary ...          

Never shy of discussing sexual politics, D. H. Lawrence naturally had something to say about all this. In an article first published in the Sunday Dispatch in November 1928, Lawrence writes:    

"The business-man's pretty and devoted secretary is still chiefly valuable because of her sex appeal. Which does not imply 'immoral relations' in the slightest. Even today, a girl with a bit of generosity likes to feel she is helping a man, if the man will take her help. And this desire that he shall take her help is her sex appeal. It is the genuine fire, if of a very mediocre heat. Still, it serves to keep the world of 'business' alive. Probably, but for the introduction of the lady secretary into the business-man's office, the business-man would have collapsed entirely by now. She calls up the the sacred fire in her, and she communicates it to her boss. He feels an added flow of energy and optimism, and - business flourishes. That is perhaps the best result of sex appeal today - business flourishes."

I think that's a pretty astonishing passage for several reasons (not necessarily all the right reasons). For one thing, it anticipates Deleuze and Guattari's analysis in Anti-Oedipus - as it does Helen Gurley Brown's claim in Sex and the Single Girl that office romances have a positive effect on performance and productivity. For not only will a man up his game when trying to impress a woman, but a girl in love with her boss will exhaust herself 24/7 and still wish there was more she could do to help. 

 

II.

The term secretary is derived from the Latin secernere and has connotations of something private or confidential (the English word secret has the same etymological root). A secretarius was someone, therefore, who discreetly handled the personal (or business) affairs of a powerful individual. Over time, whilst the duties of the secretary have varied and expanded, essentially the role has remained the same.

In 1870, Sir Isaac Pitman founded his famous school for would-be secretaries. Originally, much like the profession itself, it only admitted male students. But with the invention of the typewriter more and more women began to train as secretaries and by 1919 the role was primarily associated with the fairer sex. 

The period between 1945 and 1980 can probably be regarded as the golden age of the secretary. After this date, new technology and new office politics increasingly saw the role decline or transform. Secretaries became office managers, or personal assistants, or, indeed, bosses themselves and the work place became a boring, sterile environment: no fags, no booze, no flirting, no fun. 

Obviously, no one wants to write in support of sexual discrimination or sexual harassment. But, I have to admit that I find the new puritanism and political correctness just as concerning. Over the last fifty years our attitude towards the erotics of the workplace has moved from bawdy delight and Benny Hill to stern disapproval and the Time's Up movement.

Glancing down blouses and upskirts, making risqué remarks and double entendres, is now strictly forbidden or even legislated against. Some companies, apparently, have even introduced solemn love contracts for employees to sign, outlining what is and is not appropriate behaviour and who they can and cannot date.

It's all a very long way from the world of Mad Men. And if, in many respects, that's a good thing, in some ways it's a bit of a pity, because, as indicated earlier, some men and women work better and with real joy when they feel themselves attractive and subject to the charged flow of desire. Lawrence writes:

"If only our civilisation had taught us how to let sex appeal flow properly and subtly, how to keep the fire of sex clear and alive, flickering or glowing or blazing in all its varying degrees of strength and communication, we migh all of us have lived [and worked] all our lives in love, which means kindled and full of zest, in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of things. Whereas what  a lot of dead ash there is to life now!"  

Notes 

Jacques Derrida, 'The Word Processor', Paper Machine,  trans. Rachel Bowlby, (Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 29-30. Click here to read online.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 293.

Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl, (Bernard Geis Associates, 1962).

D. H. Lawrence, "Sex Appeal', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 147-48.

See also: Julie Berebitsky, Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire, (Yale University Press, 2012), which offers a more critical and in-depth analysis on this subject than I've been able to offer here. 

Click here to view George Costanza's (failed) attempt to do the right thing and stay out of trouble when hiring a secretary in the Season 6 episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Secretary', dir. David Owen Trainor, written by Carol Leifer and Marjorie Gross (original air date 8 Dec 1994). 

And click here to view the trailer for the 2002 film Secretary, dir. Steven Shainberg, starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson based on the short story (of the same title) by Mary Gaitskill.

Reflections on the Typewriter 3: Nietzsche and His Golden Writing Ball

Nietzsche's Typewriter. Photo: Dieter Eberwein

Copyright: The Goethe and Schiller Archive, Weimar

Whilst Heidegger never learned to love the typewriter and Derrida did so only after overcoming much resistance to the idea, Nietzsche was a fan from the get-go; in fact, he was the first great philosopher to own a typewriter and even composed a four-line poem in which he compared himself to his machine:

THE WRITING BALL IS A THING LIKE ME: MADE OF IRON
YET EASILY TWISTED ON JOURNEYS.
PATIENCE AND TACT ARE REQUIRED IN ABUNDANCE
AS WELL AS FINE FINGERS TO USE US. 

Initially, one might be surprised by this - for whilst he's never as suspicious of machines as Heidegger, Nietzsche's unable to affirm the development of science and technology without reservation, regarding it as fundamentally nihilistic in character and incapable of serving as a foundation for culture.

However, the dramatic deterioration of his vision obliged him to reconsider his reading and writing regime. As any prolonged use of his eyes caused him great distress and suffering - and by prolonged we mean for more than twenty minutes at a time - he had to find a new way to work. And so, in 1882, he purchased a portable typewriter: the Malling-Hansen Writing Ball ...

Invented in 1865 and shown at the 1878 Paris Universal Exhibition to great acclaim, the Writing Ball was the closest thing to a 19th-century laptop; small, light, fast, and easy to operate. It was also cheaper than the American typewriter manufactured by Remington.

Unfortunately, despite his initial excitement, Nietzsche never really mastered his Writing Ball and he soon got fed-up with his new contraption - particularly after it was damaged and he was unable to get it properly repaired.

Media theorist Friedrich Kittler has some interesting things to say about all this in his book Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (1999), characterising Nietzsche as the first mechanized philosopher who produced a kind of écriture automatique without even having to read (or even look at) the page (thereby saving his poor eyes from further strain).

Kittler argues that by integrating a machine into his writing process, it profoundly changed not only his style of composition, but ultimately impacted upon his thought as well; he moved from fully developed arguments and lengthy essays comprised of logically arranged propositions to aphorisms and fragments of text that displayed a perversely non-systematic manner of thinking.

In other words, the Malling-Hansen Writing Ball enabled Nietzsche to become the postmodern philosopher - or practitioner of die fröhliche Wissenschaft - we know and love. His idiosyncratic text emerged partly from his own philosophy of language, partly from his near-blindness, and partly from his willingness to explore the horizon of possibility that new technologies afford us.        


Visit: the Malling-Hansen Society website for further details on the case of Nietzsche and his Writing Ball: click here. 

See: Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz, (Stanford University Press, 1999). The entire text can be found online: click here. 

Play: Leroy Anderson, The Typewriter (1950), a short musical composition which famously features a typewriter as a percussion instrument. The piece received its premier on September 8, 1953 during a recording made by Anderson and the Boston Pops Orchestra in NYC for Decca Records. To watch the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra perform their version, in 2012, click here. 

To read part one of this post on Heidegger, click here. 

To read part two of this post on Derrida, click here.