Essay On The Cult Of Domesticity

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Recommended: 19th century womanhood

The woman causing heads to snap on the street is so much more than a seductive secret. Behind her mysterious and beautiful presence lies an unique past of role models and self doubt.

To understand literature it is always critical to return back to the author and the time period during which they wrote. Anaïs Nin was a modernist author, the perfect example of the unreliable narrator. During the 1900s the role of women and the definition of femininity was changing. The Cult of Domesticity was fading away and the idea of womanhood was exploring new directions. Women were voting, working, and, in Anaïs' case, even acting as the traditional male role of a relationship. As women changed so did the femme fatale, evolving past the simple idea of the temptress Eve as a foil of the virgin Mary. This modern femme fatale frightened the general public because it was the personifications of their fears. During the nineteenth and twentieth …show more content…

Before June joined Henry Miller and Anaïs at Louveciennes. Henry spun tales about June, and Anaïs ate them up. The second the two women met Anaïs was infatuated with June. She loved June because she was everything Anaïs could not be. June was confident in herself in a way Anaïs could only dream of, "I will never know again who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You are the woman I want to be I see in you that part of me which is you…(21) ". Anaïs was constantly internally battling herself, trying to define her identity as either women, neurotic, or artist. In comparison June was more mature, well aware that she was a beautiful and mysterious women, and the secrecy surrounding her life made her a femme

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