Intro: A major structural component to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” is his use of lists. A major theme in this so-called American epic is about opening his arms to everybody in society, including those on the bottom rungs of the ladder, like the prostitute. The Victorian era had some strict gender notions, for example, “the angel in the house,”yet prostitution was one of the most prevalent jobs next to tailors, showing the polar opposites in extremes: one side being very conservative and oppressed and the other side as a socially unacceptable career but with more freedom and independence. Look at my previous blog post to get more background on Whitman's New Yorker prostitutes.
Some questions: How gender is treated in the poem in terms of masculinity/femininity and gender regarding social order and customs? Think about how Whitman perceived the prostitute. Considering the context of the poem, is he inclusive of the prostitute? What do you think womanhood meant to Whitman, to the generalized Victorian society? How did women end up in prostitution - by choice, force, desperation? The prostitute is mentioned a couple times in the poem here:
Page 22:
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype,
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minutehand of the clock moves slowly,
The opium eater reclines with rigid head and just-opened lips,
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck,
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other,
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you,)
The President holds a cabinet council, he is surrounded by the great secretaries,
Page 29:
Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves,
Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons,
Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars—and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised,
Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung.
Assignment: Consider the questions above.Free write for about fifteen minutes (using a computer on either a word doc or blog entry) on what your conceptions of womanhood during the Victorian era are and how Whitman would have been accepting or critical of the prostitute. Do some further online research (because the internet is fast and convenient!) on the gender roles during the 19th century, the links above are only a start- consider how women lived in both the "angel in the house" world and the brothel world. What was the typical upbringing of a woman who ended up in either situation? How might womanhood and the controversial issue of prostitution relevant today? At then end of your free write you will get into groups of three or four and discuss what you wrote. BE SURE TO FREE WRITE AFTER THE RESEARCH SO THAT YOU HAVE A GOOD IMPRESSION ON WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT.
*I've suggested using a computer for the free write because I think most people write more using a keyboard than with paper and pen - A little word vomiting is okay because the idea is to have an open-ended discussion afterwards.
