Kenyon College

Review: Freaked out: Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae

Author(s): Sandra M. Gilbert
Review by: Sandra M. Gilbert
Source: The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp. 158-164
Published by: Kenyon College
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4336635
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 SANDRA M. GILBERT

FREAKED OUT:
CAMILLE PAGLIA'S SEXUAL PERSONAE

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. By

Camille Paglia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. 718 pp. $35.00.

"A woman of 'Heroick mind,' she intimidates by her monomania, eva-

sion of physical contact, and want of ordinary homely emotion" (179). So
writes Camille Paglia of Spenser's Belphoebe, but in a sense she might as well
be speaking of herself. Certainly Sexual Personae, her study of "Art and
Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson," is a work of "heroick" ambi-
tion, if not "mind," and in its relentless cataloging of what the author sees as
western culture's recurrent "sexual personae" it is markedly monomaniacal. As
for "evasion of physical contact" and "want of ordinary homely emotion,"
these characteristics are manifested in Paglia's often feverish celebration of the
"cold" Apollonian eye and in her impassioned insistence that "I follow the
Decadents in trying to drive Rousseauist benevolence out of discourse on art
and nature" (429).
A frank disciple of that foe to "homely emotion" the Marquis de Sade
("the most unread major writer in western literature" [2]), Paglia loathes
liberalism, egalitarianism, feminism, and Mother Nature; indeed, her aesthetic
heroes and heroines, besides Sade, are those who are literally so freaked out by
"the dumb fingers of fetid organic life which Wordsworth taught us to call
pretty" (11)-by "nature's coarse materialism, its relentless superfluity," its
"spuming and frothing" (28)-that they recreate themselves in life and art as
monsters of Apollonian will, hard cold "personalities"set like rocky dams (or
damns) against the flux of physical being. "Disgust is reason's proper response
to the grossness of procreative nature" (12), sermonizes Paglia, adding in a
telling aside that "Only utopian liberals could be surprised that the Nazis were
art connoisseurs" (29).
If all this sounds odd or shocking, that's because it is, and deliberately so.
"My method is a form of sensationalism" (xiii), Paglia boasts. Perhaps for this
reason, whatever else there is to say about her book, even a hostile reader will
have to concede that it isn't usually boring. Because it's bloated, repetitious,

158

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sometimesawkwardlywritten and almost always elaboratinga few bizarre
ideesfixes, one might naturallyexpect that it would also be dull. But Sexual
Personaehas some of the maddeningfascinationof such other monumental
intellectualcuriositiesas Colin Wilson'sTheOutsideror EmanuelVelikovsky's
Worldsin Collision. Eccentric,obsessive,arrogantlyencyclopedic,it appears
to be the productionof a kind of gender studies idiot savant who yearnsto
know everything(sexual)about everythingfrom Egyptto Amherstexcept for
what others have thought and said in the last twenty years.
"Omissionsare not accidents,"MarianneMoore famouslyasseverated,
and perhapsone should do Paglia the courtesyof assumingthat her scholarly
and theoreticalomissions are intentionalratherthan accidental.In any case,
however,they are breathtaking.In a book on sexualitywhosestatedaim is "to
fuse Frazerwith Freud"(xiii), Paglia shows no familiaritywhatsoeverwith
recent(and even not so recent)historical,anthropological,psychoanalytic,or
literarywork on gender and its (dis)contents.The gaps and absencesin her
notes and indexincludethe namesof such basicthinkersin the fieldas Lacan,
Levi-Strauss,and Foucault, while she makes only minimal referencesto a
numberof other importantfigures(for instance,Sartreand de Beauvoir),and
entirelyfails to discuss the major Americanfeministswho have investigated
preciselythe issues she examines(for example, Dorothy Dinnerstein,Nancy
Chodorow, Gayle Rubin, and SherryOrtner, among many others). As for
literarythinkers,my own omissionof a list of omissionsof gendertheoristsin
this area is not accidentalsince Paglia rarelycites anyone who has writtenon
the textsshe treats:the majorexceptionsto this rulearehermentor(andblurb-
ist) Harold Bloom, her college teacherMilton Kessler(whose classroomlec-
turesshe quoteswithenthusiasm),and G. WilsonKnight(whosewritingsfrom
the thirtiesand forties appearto have fostered in her a taste for the "arche-
typal").
About what some anthropologists now call the sex/gender system,
Paglia'sevidentlyinnocenthypothesesare as follows: the "grossmaterialism"
of nature, red in tooth and claw, is at least metaphoricallyfemale, because
associated with woman's biological maternity. Hence, the mother- incar-
nating"chthonian"nature-is "anoverwhelmingforce who condemnsmen to
lifelong sexual anxiety, from which they escape through rationalism and
physical achievement"(xiii), including (in "the west," though mysteriously
enoughnot in "theeast")the achievementof genderedpersonaethroughwhich
they reimagineeither women or themselves.
To make matters more complicated, this vast biological scheme is
dramaticallyincarnatedin the contrastsbetween female and male anatomy.
Woman, imprisonedby "thebrute inflexiblerhythmof procreativelaw" (10)
and as mystifiedas man is terrifiedby her slimy hiddengenitals,is by birthan
"earthboundsquatte[r]"who "merely waters the ground she stands [or
crouches?]on" (21) when she urinates, while man, anatomicallyas well as
psychologicallydeterminedto defend himself against the seething chaos of

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i6o THE KENYON REVIEW

maternal nature, is urged toward "concentrationand projection"(19) in

orgasm, conceptualization,and urination(whichPaglia sees as a specialkind
of masculine "accomplishment,an arc of transcendence"[21]). Indeed,
although Paglia claims that she wishes to "reaffirmand celebratewoman's
ancient mysteryand glamour"(xiii), she declaresin a burst of confessional
candor that the "woundlikerawnessof female genitals is a symbol of the
unredeemabilityof chthonian nature"(17). "In aesthetic terms,"she adds,
"femalegenitalsare luridin color, vagrantin contour,and architecturally inco-
herent.Malegenitals,on the otherhand,thoughthey riskludicrousnessby their
rubberyindecisiveness. .. havea rationalmathematicaldesign,a syntax"(17).
For Paglia, it follows from all this as the dawn the darkthat, on the one
hand, the "cool beauty of the femme fatale"is a crucial"transformationof
chthoniannature"(15), and, on the other hand, "Malehomosexualitymay be
the most valorousof attemptsto evadethe femmefataleand to defeatnature,"
because by "turningaway from the Medusanmother, whetherin honor or
detestationof her, the male homosexualis one of the great forgersof abso-
lutist western identity"(15). But Sade, and his creed of sardonic cruelty,
must in her view ultimatelypresideover the ritesof impersonationundertaken
by the boldestbattlersagainstbiologybecausehe remindsus that "wehave the
right"- perhapsthe obligation- "to thwartnature'sprocreativecompulsions,
throughsodomy or abortion"or indeedthroughwhatever"perversefantasies
empty into the cold light of consciousness"(14). In this regard,Paglia com-
ments, no doubt with a conscious plan to outrage, that since "Serialor sex
murder,like fetishism,"is in her view "a perversionof male intelligence... a
criminalabstraction,"there "is no female Mozartbecausethere is no female
Jack the Ripper"(247).
So far, so sociobiological-indeed, so "essentialist"as to outbiologize
not only Freud (who would blanch at such a literalizationof his carefully
calibratedargumentabout the "psychologicalconsequencesof the anatomical
distinctionbetweenthe sexes")but even all those beastly male thinkerswith
nameslikeTigerand Fox whommanyrespectablecontemporary gendertheorists
mentiononly in undertones.Yet, surprisinglyenough, even Paglia'smost sen-
sational premises produce some interesting,occasionally compelling inter-
pretationsof key aesthetictexts and objects. When she is at her most fluent
and coherent-writing with a strangecombinationof Lawrentianspontaneity
and Wildeanwit-she producescuriouslycharmingmini-essayson the recur-
rentwesterntropeof "thebeautifulboy,"on As YouLikeIt, on Christabel,on
WutheringHeights, and on Wilde'sown The Importanceof Being Earnest.
Gender, as the historian Joan Scott has put it, is a useful "categoryof
analysis,"and Sexual Personae proves that a focus on the matter can yield
rewardsfor even the most eccentricof thinkers.
Moreover,some of Paglia'sthrowawaylines are such good fun that one
wishesshe had decidedto go to work for Woody Allen insteadof attempting
this book. On the Old StoneAge statuetteknownas the "Venusof Willendorf,"

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 SANDRA GILBERT i6i

for instance:"The Venus of Willendorf,slumping,slovenly, sluttish, is in a

rut, the womb-tombof mothernature.Neversendto knowfor whomthe belle
tolls. She tolls for thee" (57). On Wordsworth,who "createdVictoriansen-
timentalism":the "sneeringmen"at the end of "TinternAbbey"are "likea row
of desperadoes noisily taking snuff. . . . Wordsworth hopes for happiness
through pure feeling, but the happiest things in his poetry are daffodils"
(314-15).On the Marx Brothersand MargaretDumont:"Whatis Wildeanin
Dumontis her vacancy. Brilliantsmilesand witheringglancesalternatein her
face with daffy regularity.... Like Wilde's androgynes, she has no memory,
starting each moment fresh, no matter what insult she suffers from the
delirious,DionysianMarx Brothers"(558). On HenryJames:"TheJamesian
male, with his urbanpallor,is a Bartlebywith a bankaccount"(609)while"the
turgidityof the prose [in late James]is a buzzingbackgroundnoise or scrimof
chalkypowder,coveringeventhe printon the page"so that "Whymorepeople
are not seen rushingshriekingfrom libraries,shreddedJames novels in their
hands, I cannot say" (616-622).
The digressivenessof the last commentI quoted, however,points to one
of the most extraordinaryaspectsof this extraordinarybook. Writingwith a
peculiarmixtureof magisterialassertivenessand breathlessconfessionalism,
Paglia does not merely describe or analyze her subjects, she reacts. Most
strikingly,she reactswith violentshuddersof aversionto the secretlychurning
and powerfully"chthonian"female, and with little gasps of ecstatic admira-
tion to the cruellydesperate"projectile"male. And herreactionsare often -to
say the least -somewhat original.
Meditating on "Dionysus's female chthonian swamp . . . choked with
menstrualalbumen, the lukewarmmatrixof nature, teemingwith algae and
bacteria"(92), for instance, Paglia is incitedto a gastronomicobservationof
Johnsonian solemnity: "We have a food that symbolizesthis swamp: raw
clamson the half-shell.Twentyyearsago, I noticedthe strongemotionsroused
by this delicacy, to which few are indifferent.... Raw clams, I am convinced,
have a latently cunnilingualcharacterthat many find repugnant.Eating a
clam, fresh-killed,barelydead, is a barbarous,amorousplunginginto mother
nature'scold salt sea" (92).
Similarly, proposing that "We could make an epic catalog of male
achievements"(37), Pagliamuseswith swooningfervorthat "WhenI cross the
George WashingtonBridgeor any of America'sgreat bridges, I think: men
have done this. Constructionis a sublime male poetry. When I see a giant
cranepassingon a flatbedtruck, I pause in awe and reverence,as one would
for a church procession. What power of conception, what grandiosity.... If
civilizationhad been left in femalehands,we wouldstill be livingin grasshuts"
(37-38).
Strangeas they may seem, however,such impassionedresponsesdo not
exhaustthis writer'scapacityfor chattydigressiveness.As hercommentsabout
Henry James suggest, she is liable to reactwith quasi-Wordsworthian "spon-

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I62 THE KENYON REVIEW

taneousoverflow[s]of powerfulfeeling"to almost any literaryfigureor text.

"Chaucer'sconviviality,"for example,inspiresher with revulsion:"Thehearty
warmthof it all makes my skin crawl"(171). Shakespeareelicits an even more
feelingful outburst: "Antony and Cleopatra . . . may be the favorite
Shakespeareplay of my generationof critics.Unlikeolderscholars,some of us
findKingLearboringand obvious, and we dreadhavingto teachit to resentful
students"(213). Emily Dickinson'spoem 923, about drowning ("How the
Watersclosed above Him / We shall neverknow")evokes perhapsthe tersest
response:"Glug,glug"(649).
But seriously, folks: aside from the fact that some of Paglia's more
absurdpontificationsgive her book the qualityof a Browningesquedramatic
monologueutteredby a fiercelydogmaticanalysand,this work has a number
of crucialintellectualflaws. For one thing, althoughthe sweeping"from/to"
(Nefertiti/Dickinson)of the subtitle implies that the author is producing
nothingless than a culturalhistoryof "sexualpersonae"from the paganworld
to the presentage, thereis verylittle sense of historyor of historicalcausality
here. True, Paglia now and then revealsthat she has heard(perhapsfrom one
of hercollegeteachers)about "thePuritans"or the FrenchRevolution,but she
nowhereexplains how and why the "hardcold" personalitiesshe admires-
femme fatale and "beautifulboy," androgyneand Sadeiansodomite-appear
and reappearwhenand wherethey do. OverlookingChaucerand (for the most
part)Danteas well as the wholetraditionof the medievalcourtlyromance,she
plungesheadlonginto the EnglishRenaissance,with chapterson Spenserand
Shakespeare,then skips forward,just as insouciantly,past Pope and Miltonto
the Romanticsand thence to the "decadent"nineteenthcenturyon both sides
of the Atlantic.
In fact, to the extent that Paglia's transvestites,transsexuals,andro-
gynes, femmes fatales and hommes fatals do have a long and fascinating
history, she would seem to have an obligation to analyze the special
characteristicsof those culturalmomentsin which artistsand audiencesfind
these figuresparticularlyabsorbing.Here, as much as in the developmentof
her theoreticalsubstructure,she mightwell have benefitedfrom some reading
in contemporarygenderscholarship,sincesuchanalyseshavebeen undertaken
by many writerswhose work she evidentlydoes not know, including(at ran-
dom, and just for starters)SusanSontag(on "camp"),BramDijkstra(on the
femme fatale), Eve Sedgwick (on homosocial bonding and "homosexual
panic"),NatalieDavis and StephenGreenblatt(on Renaissancecrossdressing),
Susan Wolfson (on Byroniccrossdressing)and LillianFadermanand Carroll
Smith-Rosenberg(on the constructionof the lesbian)as well as Susan Gubar
and myself (on modernismand "sexchange").
To observe that Paglia makes some real factual mistakes, and that,
despiteher professedadulationof the male homosexual,she is at times guilty
of the most vulgar homophobia, may be to add insult to injury. Yet unfor-
tunatelysome of her commentsinvite intellectualand even moral contempt.

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 SANDRA GILBERT I63

When she declaresthat "Mademoisellede Maupin is one of the last literary

examplesof the woman disguisedin men'sclothing,"one fears that she has
studied little fin de siecle and modernistliterature,since works by (among
others) George Moore, Djuna Barnes, Ernest Hemingway,RadclyffeHall,
VirginiaWoolf-and on and on-regularly featurethis trope.
When she chattily confides that ". . . lesbians . . . are relentlessly
populist"while "Malehomosexualshave an instinctfor hierarchy"(516), one
must presumethat she has simplyneverheardof, for instance,those famous
Parissalons presidedover by, respectively,the aristocraticNatalieBarneyand
the masterfulGertrudeStein. Indeed,despiteStein'scomic onetimedefinition
of herself as "MountFatty," a generalizationabout sexual orientationthat
"inAmerica. .. manygay men are
precedesthis one is equallyflabbergasting:
reed-thin, while . . . many gay women are fat. When women stop trying to
please the harsh male eye, the female body just drifts right back to oceanic
nature"(434).
Finally, and most painfully,when Paglia qualifiesher remarkthat "the
male homosexualis one of the greatforgersof absolutistwesternidentity"(15)
with the caveat that "naturehas won, as she always does, by makingdisease
the priceof promiscuoussex"(15)-the firstof a seriesof offensiveassertions
about AIDS -one wondersif, beforemakingsuch a Helms-likejudgment,she
botheredto do any researchinto the epidemiologyof HIV in WesternAfrica
or among Americanand Europeanneedle-sharersand/or recipientsof blood
transfusions.But her "archetypal" theoriesappearto requireignorance."One
resultof the diseaseclaimingso manylivesis that homosexualshavebeeninvol-
untarilyrewedto theirshamanisticidentity,fatal, sacrificial,outcast"(54), she
observeswith so chillinga satisfactionthat a readerinvoluntarilyshudders.
Of course, almost any feminist-no matter what her (or his)
methodologicalor theoreticalbias-would also shudderat this book. Paglia
equates what she calls "feminism"with a few popularcliches: worshipof a
kindlymothergoddess, commitmentto "androgyny,"oppositionto rape and
pornography,blamingof "patriarchy" for all ills, and so forth. Some of these
positions (for instance, opposition to rape!) would seem to be unprob-
lematical, though as an acolyte of Sade she is inclinedto problematizeeven
women'sprotestsagainstrape, a crimeshe sees as an inevitableevil. But more
disturbingly,Paglia seems to have no sense whatsoeverthat women have a
historyand a literarytradition.Recountingthe benefitsof westernpatriarchy,
she protests, "it is patriarchalsociety that has freed me as a woman. It is
capitalismthat has given me the leisureto sit at this desk writingthis book"
(37). Evidentlyher college teachersforgot to tell her about the politicalbattles
fought by, say, ElizabethCady Stantonand Susan B. Anthony-or, indeed,
about the long literarystruggleswaged by women from Ann Bradstreetand
Aphra Behn to Charlotte Bronte and VirginiaWoolf. Certainlyher frank
admissionthat she "marvel[s]at the rarityof the woman drivenby artisticor
intellectualobsession"(653) reinforcesone's sense of the drasticgaps in her
eduication.

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I64 THE KENYON REVIEW

Paradoxically, however, the fact that Paglia does lack historical

awareness,along with the sort of self awarenesswhich such consciousness
facilitates,probablygives her book its weirdinterestas a contemporarydocu-
ment. Essentialist though she is in her interpretationof the relationship
betweenanatomyand destiny, her abidingobsessionwith what she calls "the
mysteryof gender"(205)is itself the productof an age in whichrapidlychang-
ing sex roles have increasinglyforced us to attend to that mystery. And
obviouslyanotherproductof this age is her assertion(whichwould have been
an unlikelyone beforethefin de siecle)that "westernidentity.. . is impersona-
tion" (198). At the same time, and perhaps most tellingly, Paglia enacts
preciselythe proceduresthat she describes:freakedout by "theredand purple"
of the GreatMother's"labialmaw"(118), she documentsthe powersof sexual
terroras she turnsherselfinto a sort of Sadeianmonster,proclaiming"I resist
the generalperceptionthat sadistsand masochistsare maladjusted.Like drag
queens, they see throughthe sexual masks of society"(472).
Poignantlyenough, for Paglia both the chthoniannatureshe damnsand
the sensationalpersonaeshe blesses are mad and maddening,ferocious and
feverish.By the end of her book, she is herselfdrowningin the theatricalityof
the rhetoricshe has mountedas a defense againstthe "Dionysianswamp"of
her female body. Celebratingwhat she sees as the violenceof Emily Dickin-
son's art, she producesa list of the New Englandpoet's virtueswhich, in its
hectic lubricity, summarizesmuch of her own project. "Voyeurism,vam-
pirism,necrophilia,lesbianism,sadomasochism,sexualsurrealism:Amherst's
Madamede Sade still waits for her readersto knowher"(673). To whichI can
only reply, "Glug,glug."

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