Manet's Olympi The Figuration Of Scandal

Author of Poetics Today, Charles Bernheimer, stated in his article “Manet’s Olympia: The Figuration of Scandal” that the tradition was that women were painted nude and put on display for the pleasure of the viewers, presumed men. This was to “stimulate [men’s] fantasy of sexual domination” (258). When a woman was painted nude, such as Olympia, “her nakedness is valuable not for its individuality… but for its transcendence of these marks in a formalized language intended to feed male fantasies while it erases any potentially threatening signs of woman’s desiring subjectivity” (258). Therefore, the reason Olympia is seen, as such a scandal is due to the fact that does not match the description of what is desirable for a nude painting of a woman.

Some of the details being her hair, the flowers carried by her black servant, the black servant herself, and the black cat. Bernheimer describes her hair as softening Olympia’s face, “giving it a more traditional, feminine look” (269). The author describes the black cat as being one of the most scandalous of the substitutes. It is said that black cats are slang for the female sexual organ. Thirdly, the flowers carried by her black servant as said to have function “as a desexualized displacement of Olympia’s genitals [but] the connotations of the black female counteract this function” (271). Lastly, Bernheimer describes the maid as being “in many ways difficult to interpret as Olympia herself” (272). Some critics evoke the speculation that she is a dark counterpart to Olympia’s whiteness, but rather she is an emblem of the dark, “threatening, and anomalous sexuality lurking just under Olympia’s hand” (272). Bernheimer retreats to explaining how Olympia’s hand displacement does not revolve around the castration threat, but rather it is a reflection back to the male viewer, and the fetishized desire of his gaze, but without the