Analysis Of Barker-Benfield's 'Culture Of Sensibility'

After Bethany and Sarah's presentation, "Nature as Woman," I was interested and confused - as were they, I think - by the multiplicity of contradicting views of nature as it relates to gender. According to dominant views on Romanticism, access to nature required a distinctly feminine perspective. Paradoxically, this feminine perspective, entitled ycleped 'sensibility' was to be taken utilized most effectively by men, yet it rested on 'feminine' "emotion [as] … a more pure response to nature" (Fay 5). According to G.J. Barker-Benfield's The Culture of Sensibility "the sentimentalizing process" involved the temperance of a certain 'manliness' that is "uncouth and savage" (288) unless moderated by a feminine influence, thus woman was to use the so-called 'natural' gifts of her sex to lend culture to her more robust and virile counterpart. On first glance, this moderation of 'manly' characteristics appears to lend legitimacy to 'feminine' ideals; however, this apparent liberation of the feminine illuminates two very serious problems. First, as Barker-Benfield points out, 'feminine' ideals are privileged, but only as they serve to improve upon man; woman is not idealised in her own right. In this service of a masculine purpose "woman was to be 'fashioned' by men rather than by herself" (288). Second, the seemingly legitimisation of 'feminine' ideals can appear progressive but, as a result, ultimately serves to authenticate an idea of 'natural femininity that is, in the opinion of many a feminist, a repressive

The relationship between woman and nature is always ambivalent, illuminating many interesting paradoxes that, I think, reveal a patriarchal mindset that is constantly striving and failing to solidify and naturalize its gender assumptions. In the end, gender and patriarchy itself are proven unstable and fundamentally