The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History

From South Park to Kathy Acker, and from Lars Von Trier to Sex and the City, women's sexual organs are demonized. Rees traces the fascinating evolution of this demonization, considering how calling the 'c-word' obscene both legitimates and perpetuates the fractured identities of women globally. Rees demonstrates how writers, artists, and filmmakers contend with the dilemma of the vagina's puzzlingly 'covert visibility'. In our postmodern, porn-obsessed culture, vaginas appear to be everywhere, literally or symbolically but, crucially, they are as silenced as they are objectified. The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History examines the paradox of female genitalia through five fields of artistic expression: literature, film, TV, visual, and performance art. There is a peculiar paradox – unlike any other – regarding female genitalia. Rees focuses on this paradox of what is termed the 'covert visibility' of the vagina and on its monstrous manifestations. That is, what happens when the female body refuses to be pathologized, eroticized, or rendered subordinate to the will or intention of another? Common, and often offensive, slang terms for the vagina can be seen as an attempt to divert attention away from the reality of women's lived sexual experiences such that we don't 'look' at the vagina itself – slang offers a convenient distraction to something so taboo. The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History is an important contribution to the ongoing debate in understanding the feminine identity

Table of Contents:
1. Revealing the Vagina: Introduction 2. Revealing the Vagina: Antecedents 3.Revealing the Vagina in Literature 4. Revealing the Vagina in Visual Art (1): Judy Chicago 5. Revealing the Vagina in Visual Art (2): Birth's Wide Berth 6. Revealing the Vagina on Film and TV 7. Revealing the Vagina in Performance Art 8. Revealing the Vagina: Conclusion Revealing the Vagina: Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Emma L.E. Rees is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Chester, UK.

Review :
The broadest survey yet ....lively, thought-provoking, and richly researched. Rees' book is the kind of work we need more of if we are to challenge and reconfigure how we understand women and sexuality in contemporary discourse. Demonized, silenced and objectified, Rees deftly explores the history of the vagina in culture. At last! A book on the vagina that I feel privileged to endorse. This careful literary and cultural history explores the vagina primarily as a loaded cultural symbol. It critiques the numerous ways in which the female sexual organs have had deleterious meanings projected onto them by patriarchal society. A magnificent achievement, Rees's study is as insightful in its analysis as it is comprehensive in its historical coverage. This really wonderful book on the cultural history of the vagina is scholarly and accessible, entertaining and serious. It is stylish and packed with insight; it will be seized upon and devoured by the new feminists. The Vagina bejazzles. I highly recommend it. “With Vagina, Rees is aiming for something well beyond 'feminism.' To get there, she uses humor, numerous examples, and careful explanation as she moves effortlessly through a variety of historical periods and a wide genre of 'art' to demonstrate her point.” Analyses of representations of the vagina in art and culture couple with feminist politics in this impassioned tract by University of Chester lecturer Rees. For readers disappointed by Naomi Wolf's treatise on a similar topic last year, this is the book you've been waiting for… This may not be the definitive text on the vagina – Rees is clear that she can't overturn centuries of embarrassment and taboo in a single book – but it's an excellent place to start. It is my contention that you will know quite instinctively if you are the target reader for a book describing itself as a literary and cultural history of vaginas. (Vaginae? Vaginodes?) How does this description of Judy Chicago's art make you feel? “Each plate, a vulvar motif at its centre, represents a woman's yearning for autonomy and recognition away from patriarchy's eradications and constraints.” If you found that intriguing, rather than snigger-worthy or arcanely academic, you will enjoy what's on offer here. There is a learned digression on other words for vagina...and a survey of depictions of female genitalia in folk tales, film, literature, art and television... The examples are well chosen and engaging. Rees is especially strong on the rapidly evolving (and more in-your-face) artistic (or would-be artistic) representation of the [vagina] in contemporary (Western, and even here basically American and British) culture, both fringe and more mainstream...Rees offers many interesting examples and the odd tidbit[s] (Courbet's L'origine du monde comes from the collection of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan!), and though she works more by example than evaluation, there's a lot of useful information here. The Vagina is exactly what it purports to be: a literary and cultural history of impressive breadth and frequently rewarding depth…. The Vagina remains an informative and considered book: it is a resource, and a source of power. A polyphonic mixture of high and low, it will engage the feminist philosopher at home with Kristeva, as well as those comparably new to these ideas. The Vagina is not, to borrow a term from Laurie Penny, the 'feminism-as-spectacle' that Wolf and many others who court the mainstream gaze are so keen to offer us; rather it is feminist writing of the best kind, that which comes from genuine engagement and real political concern. Don't be fooled by the playful pink cover-this book is not for the faint of heart. Ranging from Indian folktales of vagina dentata to the surprising popularity of vaginas in postmodern art, Rees' book is a whirlwind tour of the literary and cultural history of the treatment (and mistreatment) of female genitalia. Helpful parenthetical asides define the more esoteric academic language. However, the casual reader may be discouraged by the overwhelmingly dense nature of the information that is presented, with regrettably minimal analysis. Still, the excellent citations and quality of the information offered will appeal to scholarly readers. Best for academic libraries.