The "Ghosting" of incest and female relations in Harriet Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci

• Autores: Vivien Green Fryd
• Localización: Art bulletin, ISSN 0004-3079, Vol. 88, Nº 2, 2006, págs. 292-309
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Viewed within the context of mid-nineteenth-century attitudes toward gender and sexuality, Harriet Hosmer’s sculpture Beatrice Cenci reveals that the artist recognized ways in which texts about Beatrice Cenci "ghosted" her status as a victim of incestual rape. The sculpture’s subject, patricide in retaliation for incest, intersects with the artist’s unconventional lifestyle and sexuality. These themes derive from society’s containment and condemnation of sexuality, Hosmer’s interest in unconventional behavior and ambivalences about normative sexuality, Cenci’s radical striking back against patriarchal oppression, and the nineteenth-century women’s movement.