The Courtly Model and its Contemporary Role
Israel Sanchez
The courtly model plays an important role in the novels we have read in class and in almost all the Chaucer stories. It is an essential model from this time and gives an interesting way to think about love relationships. It was a radical model in many ways when it became popular because it afforded women certain powers over men that were not present before. At least on the surface, it put women in the middle of a game that gave them a bit of sexual liberation. The men that courted these women, were expected to jump through hoops to prove to the women that they deserved their love. We also examined desire and its role in the actions of the characters and what their fate was. Lacan stated that the only mistake a person could be responsible for is to give distance to one’s own desire, to not follow that which is most true and integral to one’s self. Our class has been informative and provided me with a different way to read the novels from this time. However, I would like to present a different way that we can analyze novels that deal with love and sex because although the courtly model is important, and still applicable to Corregidora, it does not provide an inclusive and broad enough view of sex in a novel such as Corregidora especially as it misses the component of race and doesn’t address how such a factor could affect the stories. The courtly model may not be the only way to interpret the stories we have read in your class.
Corregidora, written by Gayl Jones, may not be set in the 21st century but provides a more accurate portrayal of the worst issues that can come from relationships and gives an insight to the problem of a patriarchal society, and the violence that women can face in the way that our society has structured power dynamics in relationships. Not to mention the fact that Corregidora deals with the role race and slavery can play to further complicate and affect these relationships, something that Chaucer and the courtly model lack totally. In the novel, Ursa, the protagonist, searches for her identity and independence while being haunted not only by the intergenerational trauma of her family’s suffering at the hands of their slave owners but also with the abuse she has faced from her own partners. Her grandmother and mother were fathered by the same man, a Portuguese slave-owner named Corregidora. Corregidora abused these women and made them work as prostitutes even after the end of slavery. He was abusive mentally and physically, leaving a mark on them emotionally but also through generations as they had his children. Ursa must bear witness to the abuse of her ancestors and is expected to do the one thing that is often imposed on women to control them, to give birth to a child as so to keep the memories of the abuse alive. She loses the ability to do this because of her abusive lover and must come to terms without not being able to fulfill the one thing that was always asked of her as she was growing up. There is an emptiness inside of her that she describes as preventing her from being with another man. As you may be able to begin to see, there is no courtly model here to be analyzed. What we have here is what may come after “the game” for many women, it is the regression to a relationship where men are in power and expect certain things from the women they are with, and no longer must bend at their requests. Ursa’s desire, if ever present in this novel, is clouded by the abuse she has had to endure and the awful positions she is put in. For her love, sex and relationships were never able to provide her with the kind of joy and fantasy as the characters in the stories we have read. Ursa was never really in control of the men and they never adhered to her wishes, instead she is constantly hounded by the sexual advances of men and must be reminded of the possibility of birth that was taken from her.
Ultimately in the courtly model, the men were the ones who truly held the power for several different reasons. It was the men who could initiate the courtship, never the women. Although the women were at the center of the game and were expected to give men tasks, they were expected to ultimately give into their desire while making sure that they were never caught because the honor of their husbands was tied up with them. I would argue that the courtly model would not be enough to analyze the stories we read. Although it is a general theme in them, they are never perfectly played out and often show that the men are truly the ones in power. For example, in the “Franklin’s Tale” Dorigen is pushed to the edge of suicide by both men in their stories. Her fate was out of her hands and she suffered greatly due to the actions of the men in the novel, showing she had no real power and the courtly model is not as valuable in viewing it. On the other hand, there is courtship like the courtly model in Corregidora. Mutt and Ursa have a courtship before they are married and play a game as the novel progresses, which ultimately ends in Ursa and Mutt being intimate again. Similarly, Ursa’s mother and father have a courtship when he first became interested in her. He makes several attempts to spend time with her and she agrees slowly just as in the courtly model. They ultimately consummate but the violence that occurs after shows that the courtly model may be applicable to many stories but may not be enough.
In Corregidora, there is a question that is posed, and its answer, which we received at the end of the novel, challenges this power dynamic and puts it on its head. This question arises when Ursa decides to go home with Mutt and begins to perform fellatio on him. “What is it a woman can do to a man that make him hate her so bad he wont to kill her one minute and keep thinking about her and can’t get her out of his mind the next?” (pg. 184), this question is posited as Ursa is thinking about her grandmother doing this same thing to Corregidora and how it had to be something sexual. In this instant, she experiences that which her great grandmother had with Corregidora. A moment where she was in control of his life just as she had over Mutt in that instant, a moment where she understands what it was that her great grandmother could have possibly said to Corregidora to have made him want to love her and kill her at the same time. In that very next moment she realizes what the answer to this question is and this is where we see everything we understood challenged. “A moment of pleasure and excruciating pain at the same time, a moment of broken skin but not sexlessness, a moment just before sexlessness, a moment that stops before it breaks the skin” (pg. 184). This is where Ursa and the reader realize that this thing that was being asked about in the question, is the moment of her biting slightly on Mutts penis, a moment where he is at his most vulnerable in his very masculinity, a moment that makes the power dynamic that existed between them futile. It is in this moment that the patriarchal aspects of our relationships, often a direct result of models such as the courtly one, are challenged and made irrelevant. She realizes in this moment that not only is she choosing on her own to do this to him, but that she could kill him in a very moment’s notice. She understands that her great grandmother also had this power over Corregidora and that the power that he and Mutt have over these women does not make sense, if it is in this very moment that they render themselves the most vulnerable to these women. Where Ursa would lose all her power and dignity in the courtly model the moment that she gives into her desire, she is able to regain it when she is performing this act on Mutt.
The courtly model is a very specific way to view different relationships in the novels that we have read, but often falls short in being able to interpret more modern novels that also exist outside of the traditional Western literature. It is novels like Corregidora that exist outside of these models and are not as easy to break down to a formula. They integrate the damage that slavery had on a group of people and how those horrors can live on through generations and go so far as to the damage the relationships of those who descend from it. For Ursa there was never a place for her to claim her agency through the actions of men but rather through her own. It is important for me to mention these ideas to you because it provides a different perspective on the evolution of the relationships of the novels we read and how it is not enough to simply look at the courtly model.
Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo
In Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo, the novel begins with Indigo’s story. Despite some allusions we are unclear about her age. Not only does she play with dolls, but she speaks to them and say they speak to her and others as well. That behavior is clearly reminiscent of young children who have imaginary friends and give their dolls personalities and allow them to take the blame for things they do that they know is wrong or inappropriate. For example, Indigo does this when she, or her doll, Miranda, as she claims , asks Mrs. Yancey, “how come the white people give you so many things?” (Loc 172) knowing the question is too forward and afterwards, she rebukes her doll. The novel also makes both explicit and implicit allusion to her age. At one point, it refers to her as a ‘girl-child’: “A girl-child with her dolls is unlikely to arouse attention anywhere” (loc 133), while on the other hand, in the first few pages they allude to her womanhood saying that, “Where there is woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of the spirits” (Loc 77), then in the next paragraph, attributing those same characteristics to Indigo.
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
After reading Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”, we see that the mentality of grouping everything good or right or respectable as being “white”, and everything bad and negative as being “nigger-like”, is the metaphorical mountain of racism that he is saying African Americans must overcome in order to succeed. The “high class” negroes he describes as aspiring to whiteness, tend to distance themselves as much as possible culturally and physically from other African American people and establishments, and try to put themselves in close proximity with things they associate with whiteness and that will bring them closer to being white. He speaks about the usually dark skinned negro man who marries a negro woman as close to white as possible, and works at a white establishment, and they warn their children not to be “like a nigger” when they’re bad. He is basically talking about the deep rooted issues with African Americans who have been brainwashed to hate themselves, their skin, and anything that id representative of their true self. It is clear that these African Americans have grown to internalize white teachings that black is not beautiful and that white is the epitome of greatness. This phenomenon is the reason why he believes that black writers and artists will never reach their full potential. By rejecting these things, they are rejecting their people and essentially rejecting themselves, both of which they must accept in order to achieve greatness.
RALPH ELLISON’S “INVISIBLE MAN” AS A PARABLE OF OUR TIME
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/ralph-ellisons-invisible-man-as-a-parable-of-our-time
Saw this article in The New Yorker and just wanted to share
History Quiz Power Points
Hey All,
So the History Quiz will be on Thursday, December 8th. Below you will find three power points: The first two are the power points from class, and the last one is the power point I’ve made highlighting the most important parts of both power points. You should use the third power point to study. Please note that the last four slides have multiple important dates. You should focus on the bolded dates. There are roughly about 31-35 important dates in the whole slide. The quiz will be on 20.
1: post-bellum-timeline-revised
2: who-art-thou-history-2-for-af-am
3: history-quiz-2-prep-slide (USE THIS SLIDE TO STUDY FOR THE QUIZ)
Layout 1 for Digital Chapbook
Hi everyone! Sorry for the lateness of this post but I had to work out some kinks in the code before I set this layout free. Technically speaking, this is an interactive layout as it’s hosted on tumblr, and this isn’t the final blog (if we end up choosing tumblr to host our chapbook, I’ll move the code to a more permanent fixture).
This is the link and the password to enter is “curseenfall2016”. You can click through the three icons on top and explore each potential page layout for our poems. We can either keep each of those individual layouts or make them all the same, but those are the page layouts I’ve prepared.
Daughters of the Dust movie
Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo reminded me of this movie Daughters of the Dust.
Cypress’s Mastery.
In Chapter 18 of Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo—we get a chance to witness this fire that is spouting out of Cypress fully manifest into her dancing. Throughout the novel, Cypress comes off as a carefree individually but as the story continues a fire starts to grow within her—causing her to become fiercer both with her talent and with her character. After Cypress encounters Ariel and sees how his life has went spiraling downward, she goes to her dance class, the narrator writes “Two-thirty jazz class; studio A, Cypress did her warm-ups with a vengeance. She couldn’t get away from the flashes of Ariel’s beating, his wounds, the glory his company had known,” (Page 237 in the e-book) the narrator uses the word “vengeance” to describe how Cypress does her warm-ups to show a rage that is slowly pouring out of her. Ariel was great dancer, who has taught Cypress everything that he knows and to watch him waste his talent and life away fills Cypress with this vengeful fury. At this point, Cypress has something to prove both to herself and the world—that although it is profoundly difficult to be an artist—especially if you’re African-American—the passion, determination, and rawness you bring to your work can help you hone in on your talent. While in her dancing session the narrator writes, “Idrina demonstrated. Cypress followed, triumphant. She arched her back to the floor, opening chest, arms reaching for the windows, head at her heel, her leg pulling toward the farthest corner. That breath, as all her body expanded in different directions, that moment was for Ariel in his prime. The impulse to turn, catch her shadow still in preparation, was so accurately executed the eloquence forced Idrina to step back. Cypress had learned so well, there was nothing more for Idrina to teach her,” (Page 238 in the e-book). Cypress has always been very passionate but she has never shown passion as she did in this scene, the passion she has to not only be a great dancer but to show tribute to someone who was a great dancer gives her the fire to execute moves so gracefully. She starts to utilize this passion she has within herself, and it takes her to such great lengths that even Idrina—someone who is an advance dancer—takes notice of this change in Cypress and acknowledges that Cypress has surpassed her. There is a rawness in the way she expands in different directions but still manages to maintain that eloquence and the vengeance ignites her fire, which brings her to a level of mastery that she was never able to achieve before.
-Carol
Indigo’s womanhood
We encounter an interesting character in the beginning of Sassafras, Cyprus & Indigo. Indigo is a young woman who is caught in a situation where she has an active imagination and childlike characteristics while beginning to mature physically into a woman. She enjoys playing with her dolls and visiting her neighbors to receive cookies and treats from them. However, her mother and sisters criticize her for holding on to this “childhood”. Indigo challenges the conceptions of what is expected of a woman. She does not care for the typical standards of womanhood that others want her to be held to. It challenges us to think of how these standards came to be and what it may mean for women of color who may be criticized even more harshly for not following them. These standards were usually propagated and enforced by men who expected a certain purity and calmness of women. The hippocracy is that many of these standards contradict themselves. They were built to try to pursue “whiteness” as closely as possible and try to refrain from anything out of that realm.