Reviews for Sex and power in history

The average rating for Sex and power in history based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-11-16 00:00:00 Richard Peralta I was disappointed in this book. In my idle moments, I had savored the idea of reading it for many years. But now that I have finished it, I find it to be much less than I hoped it would be. I admire Ruskin, both for his prose style and for the forthright moral views he expresses in this aesthetic criticism. I have dipped generously into Modern Painters, sampled The Stones of Venice, and carefully—and with delight—read The Seven Lamps of Architecture. (I was particularly struck by Ruskin’s treatment of his second “lamp,” Truth: if the architect can only afford brick, he should use the best brick he can afford, and he must never slap a facade upon it and pretend that the brick is marble.) Sesame and Lilies (1865) first attracted my attention because I used to find many copies of it for sale in thrift shops: thin, well-bound little books—obviously school editions—published in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. There must be something worthwhile in this little treatise if it had once been a temporary “classic” for use in America’s public schools. My hunch was right, I think, but not right enough. The focus of these two essays—lectures, really—is the education of the young, the first concentrating on boys, and the second on girls. The fact that they began as lectures for a popular audience may be part of the problem (I found the prose lacking in concentration, more diffuse than the Ruskin I remembered), but certainly the worst thing about the book is the attitude Ruskin takes in “Lilies,” the second lecture. Feminists have roundly condemned “Lilies,” comparing it to John Stuart Mill’s “The Subjection of Women” (1869)—published only five years later—and finding it distinctly inferior. But then Mill was a forward-looking rebel, and Ruskin was a man of his age, a man who believed in “The Angel of the House”: the sweet, self-sacrificing goddess of the Victorian home. (It must be said, too, that Ruskin was more than a little weird in his relations with women. His marriage with Effie Gray—a beautiful woman, if Thomas’ Richmond’s portrait be any guide—was never consummated, and their “union” was annulled after six years. “[H]e had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was,” said Effie Gray in a letter, “and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening...”) Ruskin’s views on women's education, though, was progressive for his time. He believed in what we would call today a liberal arts education for women, which would help women acquire the cultural literacy necessary to appreciate—and morally perfect—the accomplishments of men: All such knowledge should be given her as may enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men: and yet it should be given, not as knowledge,--not as if it were, or could be, for her an object to know; but only to feel, and to judge. It is of no moment, as a matter of pride or perfectness in herself, whether she knows many languages or one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be able to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand the sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment to her own worth or dignity that she should be acquainted with this science or that; but it is of the highest that she should be trained in habits of accurate thought; that she should understand the meaning, the inevitableness, and the loveliness of natural laws; and follow at least some one path of scientific attainment, as far as to the threshold of that bitter Valley of Humiliation, into which only the wisest and bravest of men can descend, owning themselves for ever children, gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. The first lecture, though, is superior to the second. It takes its title from the “Open Sesame,” the password that opens the treasure cave of the Arabian Nights. Every great book, Ruskin argues, is this sort of a treasure cave. If we take the trouble to learn what words mean and how they are used, then the treasures of the world’s great minds will open before us: A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages,—may not be able to speak any but his own,—may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in the PEERAGE of words; knows the words of true descent and ancient blood, at a glance, from words of modern canaille; remembers all their ancestry, their intermarriages, distant relationships, and the extent to which they were admitted, and offices they held, among the national noblesse of words at any time, and in any country. But an uneducated person may know, by memory, many languages, and talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any,—not a word even of his own. Ruskin invites his readers to become members of an aristocracy, an aristocracy that everyone can enter. All you must do is read great books and give them the proper attention.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-11-25 00:00:00 Donna Budlong John Ruskin helped form my view of book collecting. Per his advice, I built a sufficient library where each book has earned its rightful place, regardless of birth. For it was Ruskin who suggested to obtain...a serviceable and steadily increasing series of books through life; every volume having its assigned place, like a little statue in its niche. Modern readers who happen upon this collection of Ruskin's lectures on Man, Woman, Books, Work, and Nature, seem to focus on their current feelings and political environment. Balderdash. Accept his ruminations as a product of his time, just as our mush will be thus reviewed in the next decades. Let heartsickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the heart loses its life forever. His sentences have been described as spears or daggers, as they hit the main point and then move on. These lectures, first delivered in the 1860s, hit upon social philosophy, which veers between the age-old thorn of employer/employee, And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, - Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay? to Man's debt to Woman: ...no man has ever lived a right life who had not been chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by her courage, and guided by her discretion. Like Hemingway's lions lolling on the shore, my Ruskin is king over his printed dominion, now happily retired to the highest shelf, reserved for the Printed Elders of 100+ years. Self-help never looked so good. Now, therefore, see that no day passes in which you do not make yourself a somewhat better creature. Book Season = Spring (vanity not excited)