Costanza

Bergo The Poetics of Female Death 2014

The Poetics of Female Death: the Fetishization and Reclaiming of the Female Corpse in Modern
and Contemporary Art

Modern and contemporary Western visual culture abounds in images of female corpses.
Female death seems a recurrent theme, and a popular one at that, with Edgar Allan Poe
declaring: the death of a beautiful woman in unquestionably the most poetic subject in the
world.1 I am interested in understating why and how this comes to be, and I will attempt to
do so by analyzing the stylistic choices of these paintings. Poes statement, in fact, seems to
pose a qualitative and condition to the desirability of the subject: the interest is not just in the
death of any woman, but in the death of a beautiful woman. Indeed the female corpses of art,
especially those depicted by male artist, share qualities that seem clashing with death - youth,
sensuality and beauty. I will argue that this speciNic and practically univocal representational
language sheds speciNic light on what it is that audiences and artist found appealing in
watching and painting women die. Successively, I will consider instead paintings by feminist
artists, who also produced a variety of violent scenes targeting women. I will argue that the
bias of this economy of vision is exempliNied by the different representations of the topic
offered by male artists and female artists, with beauty -or lack therefore- as the interpretative
key.

The character of Ophelia, from Shakespeares Hamlet, was depicted over and over within the
Pre-Raphaelite circle. Perhaps the most notorious painting of the subject is John Everett
Millais version from 1850 (Ophelia, Fig.1). Floating lifelessly on the water, surrounded by the
triumph of Spring, Ophelia is the most beautiful of corpses. Her long hair Nloats like that of a
mermaid; her fulgid, translucent face is lost in an ecstatic expression; her Nigure is adorned by
her embroidered, bronze gown and a myriad of symbolic Nlowers. The painting is emblematic
of a general tendency for the aesthetisation of female death that characterises the late 19th
Century, in consonance with Poes statement. Georges Bataille argues that a beautiNied and
solemn representation of death, which characterises idealistic societies, stems from an
attempt to control the dread of death, which is inevitably connected to the phase of decay.2 In

1 Ruth J. Owen, Voicing the Drowned Girl: Poems by Hilde Domin, Ulla Hahn, Sarah Kirsch, and Barbara

Khler in the German Tradition of Representing Ophelia, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 102, No.
3 (Jul., 2007), 782.
2 Georges Bataille, Death and Sensuality: a Study of Eroticism and the Taboo (New York: Walker and
Company, 1962), 56

1
Costanza Bergo 4180992 Visualising the Body

this reading, Ophelia is similar to the whitened bones revered and worn as ornaments by
primitive societies, a veil of decency over death that makes it bearable.3

Yet, while the botanical accuracy and multitude of Nlowers embellish and give a sense of
scientiNic control and of the permanence of beauty, Millais artwork also contains elements of
the decay described by Bataille. Unlike other artists who chose to represent Ophelia before
her fall, he places her directly into the river, to her muddy death.4 The stagnant vegetation and
moss envelops her garments, entangling her into the murky waters. As pointed out by Alison
Smith, Ophelia is being absorbed onto the cycles of growth, maturation and decay, as if her
decomposition is being accelerated by carnivore vegetation.5 This feeling would have been
reinforced by the original element, later removed, of a water vole paddling next to her.6 The
connotations of disease and parasitism of the small mammal would have emphasised a feeling
of abject.7

The macabre voyeurism is augmented by the common knowledge that Elisabeth Siddhal, the
model for Ophelia, committed suicide herself shortly after, poisoning herself with laudanum
after giving birth to a stillborn child.8 The melancholic allure of Siddhal also pervades Beata
Beatrix (1870, Fig.2), painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti after her death. Submerged in a golden
haze, her red hair inNlamed by light, Siddhal-Beatrix stands ethereal, in a state of trance, while
a red dove delivers a white poppy (symbolic of sleep and death, but also the botanical source
of laudanum) to her motionless hands.9 She seems a celestial creature; yet her face bares a
tubercular shadow, a sickly shade around her eyes which reminds the informed viewer that
Rossetti had exhumed Siddhals body while he was working on the painting.10 Nevertheless,

3 Bataille, Death and Sensuality, 56.

4 http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_270.html [accessed 06/05/2014]
5 Alison Smith and Jason RosenNield, Millais (London: Tate Britain, 2007), 68.
6 Kimberley Rhodes, Degenerate Detail: John Everett Millais and Ophelias Muddy Death, in John
Everett Millais - Beyond the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, edited by Debra N. Mancoff, (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 2001), 58.
7 Rhodes, Degenerate Detail, 58.
8 Debra N. Mancoff, The Pre Raphaelite Language of Flowers (London: Prestel, 2012), 60.
9 Mancoff, The Pre Raphaelite Language of Flowers, 60.
10 Mancoff, The Pre Raphaelite Language of Flowers, 60.

2
Costanza Bergo The Poetics of Female Death 2014

her sensuality remains intact, her passive accessibility a magnet rather than a repellent, her
abject qualities strangely aphrodisiac, in a dialectic of attraction-repulsion that is unique to
the female corpse.

The dead womans passivity -and the inherent passivity of death- seems to increase her
eroticism: Ophelia is immobile, incapable of her own distress, completely at the visual mercy
of the viewer.11 Drowning, Ruth J. Owen observes, is the antithesis of the pronouncement that
afNirms life: the drowned woman is silenced by water, her voice killed even before her
authentic death.12 Stripped of all powers but her beautys, she becomes an object to be
consumed by the viewer;13 as Sontag argues, violence turns anybody subjected to it into a
thing.14 There is no invitation to identify with the silent muse, only to admire her:15 her death
is instrumental to the viewers pleasure.

An opposite approach can be found in feminist art, where pain and death fall within a larger
narrative of the body that aims at voicing the female experience.16 Part of this Nield of
representation includes childbirth, abortion and miscarriage. It is signiNicant to notice that,
prior to feminist art, and despite the large artistic tradition of female bodies in pain, childbirth
would be rarely represented in Western art; abortion and miscarriage never - with the
exception of Frida Kahlo.17 In her autobiographical art, Kahlo exposes the limit of what can be
spoken within hegemonic culture.18 Her long medical history along with her initial studies in
medicine inNluenced her artistic language, a mixture of symbolism and clinical imagery; her

11 http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_270.html [accessed 06/05/2014]

12 Ruth J. Owen, Voicing the Drowned Girl: Poems by Hilde Domin, Ulla Hahn, Sarah Kirsch, and

Barbara Khler in the German Tradition of Representing Ophelia, The Modern Language Review, Vol.
102, No. 3 (Jul., 2007), 783.

Ana Peluffo, Latin American Ophelias: The Aesthetization of Female Death in Nineteenth-Century
13

Poetry, Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 32, No. 64 (Jul. - Dec., 2004), 65.
14 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003), II.
15 Owen, Voicing the Drowned Girl, 783.
16 Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990), 356-358.

David Lomas, Body Languages: Kahlo and Medical Imagery. In The Body Imaged: the human form
17

and visual culture since the Renaissance, edited by Kathleen Adler and Marcia Pointon, (Cambdridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 10.
18 Lomas, Body Languages, 5.

3
Costanza Bergo 4180992 Visualising the Body

art has been deNined as more obstetrical then aesthetic.19 Yet, her paintings and drawings are
also deeply passionate and intimate, especially those concerning her abortion in 1930. A
feeling of alienation and trauma is evident in Henry Ford Hospital (1932, Fig. 3). Naked and
exposed, on a blood stained hospital bed that is suspended on a barren land distanced from
the industrial skyline of Detroit, Kahlo holds the strings -perhaps the arteries or umbilical
chords- to the symbols through which she voices her experience. Her broken pelvis, which she
believed to have cause of the miscarriage, a model of female reproductive system and the
machinery at the bottom left give a sense of her body having become a specimen to be studied
and invaded by medicine; the snails symbolises the slowness of the miscarriage; the blooded,
premature foetus becomes a symbol of horror and the indigo orchid, with its vaginal shape
similar to Georgia OKeeffes, stands as the only -albeit plucked- remains of delicacy and
natural beauty. Fragmented into external, surreal signiNicances, her body is no longer her
home, no longer her own. Through her paintings, Kahlo narrates an exploration of her
physical pain, fragility and mortality, never lachrymose but rather visceral, clinical and bloody.

Another artwork dealing with the autobiographical experience of abortion is Tracey Emins
video How it Feels (1996). The video follows Emin through the streets of London, as she
reminisces about her abortion from May 1990.20 The neutral tone of the storytelling and the
ambience of unedited, every day London (Hyde Park, Euston station) ground abortion in the
reality of everyday life, while the candour and tenderness of the tone bare no Nlags:21 the work
is not political, but rather an account of, quite literally, how it feels. Emin deNines the
abortion as life without life and death without death.22 David Lomas notes that the stark
proximity of death and birth in miscarriage and abortion adds up to nothing [...] a travesty of
creativity where birth yields only death and detritus.23 The word-based medium expresses
the irrepresentability of death in light of the lack of a corpse. While both artists -and especially
Emin- have been accused by critics of sensationalism, I believe that their images of pain

19 Lomas, Body Languages, 10.

20 Carl Freedman, Tracey Emin: Works 1963-2006 (New York: Rizzoli, 2006), 62.
21http://hyperallergic.com/63984/art-and-the-40th-anniversary-of-roe-v-wade/ [accessed
06/05/2014]
22 Freedman, Tracey Emin, 63.
23 Lomas, Body Languages, 11.

4
Costanza Bergo The Poetics of Female Death 2014

actually do serve a point that goes beyond mere voyeurism. Miranda Frickers theory of
hermeneutic injustice argues that social groups -among which women- who would be
historically excluded from those professions which contributed to creating language would
Nind themselves unable to fully understand and communicate their experience to others.24
Abortion and miscarriage can be seen as paradigmatic of the exclusion of female experience
from a public realm of signiNication;25 therefore, by breaking the silence on them and by
voicing personal experience, these works contribute to challenge hermeneutic injustice.

The question could be raised of how effective Nigurative arts can really be in displaying pain
and death. In 1914, when a suffragette destroyed Velazquez Rockaby Venus, the media
described the attack in terms that were usually reserved to sensational murder: cruel
wounds were inNlicted onto the Venus, her body bruised as if to suggest a soft,
tridimensional form, fresh fruit or human Nlesh.26 Elisabeth Bronfen, however, argues that
pictorial Nigures cannot be considered in terms of real bodies.27 A distinction must be made
between real violence and its fantasy, as only real bodies can be harmed or killed.28 What,
however should be said for photography? Susan Sontag notes that photographs can -and often
are- treated as an item of transparency.29 A presumption of veracity gives all photographs
authority.30 Even in artistic, staged photography, those are real bodies being employed. A
photograph gives its audience the illusionary feeling of possessing its truth, and especially so
when author and subject collide.31 Criticism has seen Francesca Woodmans black and white
photographs, which thematically gravitate around disappearance and evanescence, as

Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University
24

Press, 2007) 148-175.

25 Lomas, Body Languages, 11.
26 Lynda Nead, The Female Nude: art, obscenity and sexuality (London: Routledge, 1992), 38-40.

Elisabeth Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester: Manchester
27

University Press, 1992), 59.

28 Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body, 59.
29 Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979) 6.
30 Sontag, On Photography, 6.
31 Sontag, On Photography, 6.

5
Costanza Bergo 4180992 Visualising the Body

inextricably bound with her decision to take her own life at the age of 22.32 Some, like Peggy
Phelan, have even argued that her work is a continuous, conscious rehearsal of her own
death.33 Her death is a gift, her ultimate performance, the culmination of her artistic
production, something that not only enriches the mythology of her works but is even to be
considered as one of them.34

Jon Bergers contemporary essay Ways of Seeing opened up a discussion about female art and
male gaze.35 According to Berger, a woman is born into a conNined space allotted to her by the
male gaze.36 It seems in this case as if the gaze has extended from artwork to artist, in line
with Sandra Bartzkys argument on Foucaults Panopticon: that the modernisation of
patriarchal power takes place in the constant gaze on women.37 As a result, every female act is
socially rewritten as a performance for an ever present audience: man acts, woman appears;38
and as her actions are claimed and repossessed by spectators, the woman herself, by
becoming a sight, also becomes an object: the object of the -seemingly inescapable- gaze.39
While Woodmans interest in a discussion on death in her works is unquestionable -works
such as Untitled -Providence, Rhode Island (Fig. 5) attest it- a difference should be made
between what she consented to present as a spectacle -her art- and her private life. The
critical re-writing and fascination for her death ultimately embodies visual cultures interest
in death, to the point of enforcing meaning to satisfy voyeuristic appetites.

Elisabeth Bronfen, Francesca Woodman: Works from the Sammlung Verbund. Wien: Walther Konig,
32

2014), 8.

Phelan, Peggy. Francesca Woodmans Photographs: Death and the Image Once More Time, Signs, Vol
33

27, N. 4 (Summer 2002), 979-1004.

34 Phelan, Francesca Woodmans Photographs: Death and the Image Once More Time,
35 Bronfen, Francesca Woodman, 19.
36 Bronfen, Francesca Woodman, 19.
37 Bartky, Sandra Lee. Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power in Writing on
the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997)
122-126.
38 Bronfen, Francesca Woodman, 19.
39 Bronfen, Francesca Woodman, 19.

6
Costanza Bergo The Poetics of Female Death 2014

One gender fashioning an image of death of the opposite gender can never be exonerated from
a certain tension. However, whether by female or male artists, male death is never erotic: it
can be beautiNied through added moral meanings -glory and heroism, valour and honour,
sacriNice even, but it is never an erotic spectacle per se. Female corpses by male artists rather,
are frequently erotically beautiful, not in spite of but rather because they are dead. Female
death -or pain- depicted by women can instead become a vehicle to voice previously silenced
experiences, contributing to the fashioning of a female discourse on the female body. Those
images then do not fall under the category of sensationalism, because their suffering Nigures
are presented as persons and not objects, challenging the notion of voyeuristic spectacle.
Nevertheless, as can be seen in Francesca Woodman, art history, and the spectators more in
general, have a great deal of power in inscribing the meaning of an artists work, which can be
changed to suit more appealing cultural narratives.

Word Count: 2200

7
Costanza Bergo 4180992 Visualising the Body

Fig 1: John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1850
Tate Britain

Fig 2: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix, 1870

Tate Britain

8
Costanza Bergo The Poetics of Female Death 2014

Fig.3: Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital, 1932
Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museum

Fig 4: Tracey Emin, How it Feels, 1996 (still)

White Cube

9
Costanza Bergo 4180992 Visualising the Body

Fig.5: Francesca Woodman, Untitled - Providence, Rhode Island, 1975

Private Collection

10
Costanza Bergo The Poetics of Female Death 2014

Bibliography

Bartky, Sandra Lee. Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power in
Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, 122-81. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1997.

Bataille, Georges. Death and Sensuality: a Study of Eroticism and the Taboo. New York: Walker
and Company, 1962.

Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share, Vol. II and III. New York: Zone Books, 1991.

Bronfen, Elisabeth. Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1992.

Bronfen, Elisabeth. Francesca Woodman: Works from the Sammlung Verbund. Wien: Sammlung
Verbund, 2014.

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. London: Thames & Hudson, 1990.

Freedman, Carl. Tracey Emin: Works 1963-2006. New York: Rizzoli, 2006.

Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic Injustice: power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007.

Lomas, David. Body Languages: Kahlo and Medical Imagery. In The Body Imaged: the human
form and visual culture since the Renaissance, edited by Kathleen Adler and Marcia Pointon,
5-19. Cambdridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Mancoff, Debra N. The Pre Raphaelite Language of Flowers. London: Prestel, 2012.

Nead, Lynda. The Female Nude: art, obscenity and sexuality. London: Routledge, 1992.

Owen, Ruth J. Voicing the Drowned Girl: Poems by Hilde Domin, Ulla Hahn, Sarah Kirsch, and
Barbara Khler in the German Tradition of Representing Ophelia, The Modern Language
Review, Vol. 102, No. 3 (Jul., 2007), 781-792

Peluffo, Ana. Latin American Ophelias: The Aesthetization of Female Death in Nineteenth-
Century Poetry, Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 32, No. 64 (Jul. - Dec., 2004), pp. 63-78

Phelan, Peggy. Francesca Woodmans Photographs: Death and the Image Once More Time,
Signs, Vol 27, N. 4 (Summer 2002), 979-1004.

Rhodes, Kimberley. Degenerate Detail: John Everett Millais and Ophelias Muddy Death, in
John Everett Millais - Beyond the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, edited by Debra N. Mancoff,

11
Costanza Bergo 4180992 Visualising the Body

43-68. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001.

Smith, Alison and RosenNield, Jason. Millais. London: Tate Britain, 2007.

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.

Warr, Tracey. The Artists Body. London: Phaidon, 2000.

http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_270.html [accessed 06/05/2014]

http://hyperallergic.com/63984/art-and-the-40th-anniversary-of-roe-v-wade/ [accessed
06/05/2014]

12