![]() Their actions and words greatly contrast with Homer’s compliant women who are in this grave danger because they have dared to venture beyond the safety of the shore. “When women have the power to vote men in their places, will learn new phrases for their peers, just as they learned to spell ‘negro’ with one ‘g,’ as soon as black men were free and held the ballot.”Ĭlearly, these American women were not being passive or unconscious, but rather, they were asserting their own agency. In this issue, Elizabeth Cady Stanton declared: Anthony published the first women’s rights magazine, The Revolution, in 1868. ![]() ![]() Women knew that in order to gain an effective voice in American society, that they would need to gain political power, as well as a form of mass communication to express the need for change. The men are strength and virility personified, while the women represent erotic passivity.ĭuring the early 1880s, the women’s suffrage movement was gaining momentum in America, and the ideas about the importance of civil rights and equality began to spread. These nearly lifeless women become the recipients of a vigorous male life force. While Homer attends closely to the details of the muscles of these male figures, he spends equal time explicitly painting how the women’s garments cling to their wet, dripping bodies. The male figures with rippling, taut muscles drag the helpless, limp females from the sea by their hair and garments. Winslow Homer's "Undertow," 1886, oil on canvas, 30 x 48" Homer repeated this type of rescue scene coupling helpless, sodden women and erect, powerful men in other paintings, namely his 1886 Undertow. The sensuousness and sexuality of the image exhibits itself in the wet clothes clinging to the woman’s flesh, the sense of drenched bodies clutched together weighing down the thin rope, the turbulent waters below the figures, and the spray of the sea. The notion of a helpless, unconscious woman reinforces the idea of female passivity, especially in such an action-packed scene. The viewer’s eye moves around the painting, following the flow of the waves and the horizontal life line, but always coming back to the two central figures. The color palette shows a gray and blue sea and sky intertwining and offsetting the darker, more detailed figures suspended by the life line, especially highlighting the stark brightness of the woman’s red scarf. Homer chose to depict the most dramatic moment in the narrative in order to get his audience as emotionally and intellectually engaged as possible. ![]() She dangles helplessly from the pulley, her head fallen and limp, her life entirely dependent upon the man whose face is hidden behind her red scarf, which blows furiously as the figures glide towards safety. He utilizes a pulley system connected to a fading ship seen in the distance on the left side of the canvas. In Homer’s The Life Line, a faceless male figure rescues an unconscious woman from the treacherous seas below. After digging through some more articles and books, I found that there were a few people who agreed with me, but only wrote short quips about Homer’s dangling, drenched woman. Zero mention of what I saw to be an incredibly sexual, fairly degrading image. My initial thought was, “Well that’s pretty sexual for a 19th century American painting.” I kept reading about it…and reading…and nothing. Winslow Homer's "The Life Line," 1884, oil on canvas, 29 x 45 in. ![]()
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