Photo “Arnolfini Marriage by Jan van Eyck, 1434” by Flickr user geekulr.
Used under a Creative Commons license.

Twisty Faster of I Blame The Patriarchy says

I did watch a few minutes of an old movie on TCM last night, though, and was repelled enough by its Yay Patriarchyness to embark on a series of contemplations on how Western literature would scarcely exist if plots did not so consistently revolve around the purity of the female lead’s vagina, puritanical conceits concerning marriage and divorce, and whose-baby-is-it. Seriously, if you take away bastards, fallen women, and dominion-over-the-uterus as plot devices, nearly the whole canon instantly evaporates. I honestly don’t know how TCM broadcasts this crap with a straight face. “The story of a man who lived a man’s life, the story of a woman who believed in one man.”

She said it here.

Good call.

You know that blogospheric aphorism that insanity is defined as repeatedly trying the same thing expecting a different outcome? Contemplating Twisty’s observation I’m left wondering if the endless repetition she mentions has a similar basis. I mean… sure, if the dominant culture was still a semi-nomadic one that considered women a) one more form of domestic animal that b) nevertheless produced male offspring for men to bequeath their assets to then maybe we could tell the story once and make it stick. Instead we keep trying to watch, or read, listen to, or even re-enact those narratives and…

It’s not really relevant any more — no more than fathers “giving away” their daughters at their weddings.

And by the way, what would bequeath left after evaporating that bulk of the canon there’s still plenty of room for romance, adventure, lust, discovery, betrayal, achievement, loss, joy, and tragedy. In other words it needn’t be reduced to variations on the Travel Channel. Because at this point who one has or hasn’t slept with in the past is, or should be, as relevant to romance as whether they have a dowry, can churn butter, rope a calf, or sharpen a quill pen.

Almost completely-random aside: Speaking of churning butter I made some for the first time last weekend. It’s astonishingly easy. For the record (should I be posting this on Recipe Tuesday?) two pints of heavy whipping cream makes almost exactly one pound of the best-tasting, authentically rich golden-yellow butter I’ve ever eaten. It takes maybe 20 minutes with an electric mixer. I mention this now because with the holidays upon us you can expect to see whipping cream on sale from time to time, and while it’s probably not cost effective to make all your butter yourself it could be a real eye-opener for a holiday dinner, breakfast, or brunch.