The Historical Significance of the Gendered "Muse" and Portrait of a Lady on Fire

    From the cloud of romanticism and mystic figures in art history, the idea of the “muse” emerged and manifested itself in many ways in different modes of art. From the groupies of the 70s who inspired classic rock-and-roll songs, all the way back to the ancient characters of Greek mythology who demonstrate contemporary life lessons, it is often women who are relegated to the role of “muse,” a label that feminists have begun to deconstruct and ratify. I want to explore how one film, in particular, does just this and its incredible consequences. 

    What first introduced me to the concept of the muse was the 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire. A love story between two women in 18th century France, a painter named Marianne, and her “client” Héloïse. In the film, Marianne is asked by Héloïse’s mother to paint her daughter in secret, so her portrait can be sent to a potential husband, a decision Héloïse does not support. Through this conflict, writer and director Céline Sciamma explores the idea of the “gaze,” a concept developed by art and film critics to examine power dynamics between the observer and the observed. Though frequently used alongside feminist definitions of “the male gaze,”  Sciamma chooses to explore the female gaze and with this, challenges the observed in art: the muse and her significance. 

    In a Q&A with filmmaker and the two lead actresses Noémie Merlant and Valeria Golino, Sciamma boldly stated the muse is a term which historically “hides the participation of women in art history.” She is a “fetishized and silent” woman “who is inspiring just because she is beautiful.” 

    Writer Angelica Frey further explores this phenomenon, specifically in art, referencing feminist author Germaine Greer who stated “The muse in her purest aspect is the feminine part of the male artist, with which he must have intercourse if he is to bring into being a new work. She is the anima to his animus, the yin to his yang, except that, in a reversal of gender roles, she penetrates or inspires him and he gestates and brings forth, from the womb of the mind” (Art & Object). 

    The Muses originally existed as nine Greek goddesses, each one assigned a different art form. This Greek background interestingly connects back to Portrait of a Lady on Fire through the Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. It tells the tale of two separated lovers. When Eurydice is captured in hell, Hades challenges Orpheus: if he can leave the underworld without looking back to verify if Eurydice is behind him, then he and his lover can be free together. However, Eurydice is often depicted passively in this tale that centers itself on Orpheus and his journey. He is the protagonist and Eurydice is his lover, his lost muse. Portrait of a Lady on Fire parallels this tale with the story of our two heroines, lovers who can just as easily be separated by circumstance. In the film, there is a scene where the two women and their maid argue why Orpheus turned around. Marianne argues that Orpheus had a choice and chose the memory of Eurydice, making the choice of the poet, not the lover.  Héloïse replies, claiming maybe Eurydice was the voice who asked him to turn around. When asked about her inclusion of this poetic parallel, Sciamma said she was “reinventing and revisiting the myth from a feminine perspective.” Throughout the film, Marianne is haunted by a ghostly image of Héloïse in a wedding dress. When the time finally comes for Marianne to leave Héloïse, Héloïse asks her to turn around and when Marianne does, she sees the real Héloïse standing in her wedding dress. Through this scene, Sciamma gives Eurydice (Héloïse) agency, asking her lover to look at her. And Marianne makes the choice of an artist, taking the memory of Héloïse because it is all she can take. In Sciamma’s version of the myth of Eurydice, there is no woman who passively experiences a fate declared by a man, but instead women who choose who to look at and who they want to look at them. Sciamma goes on to explain that she directly shows the women in the film reading and debating the symbolism of this tale because she “wanted these women to have this intellectual dialogue and have their opinions and their hypothesis.” Not only did she subvert the Greek tale and provide it from a new perspective, but she expands further by placing this perspective in the hands of women themselves, characterizing them as inquisitive and smart women who can use their minds, not just their bodies. 

    But why does this matter? Why does it matter if women are muses to male art and left out of the conversation? Well, in the chapter Inscribing Gender on the Body, Susan Shaw and Janet Lee write “This association of women with the body, earth, nature, and the domestic is almost universal and represents one of the most basic ways that bodies are gendered. Males, because of historical and mythological associations with the spirit and sky, have been associated with the culture and mind rather than the body, and with abstract reason rather than with the earthly mundane matters (157).” When women are subjected to muse status, they are burdened with the socially constructed attributes of a body without a mind. She is to be looked at, and the significance, meaning, and creation of the art are credited to her philosophical male observer. 

    In BBC news, Eva Ontiveros discusses this with writer Natalie Haynes who is actively trying to reclaim women’s stories and voice in ancient literature. Haynes says “But often there are fantastically complicated, interesting, female characters in the ancient myths who get simplified. After 2,000 years of Western Christianity, they eventually become quite dull or are turned into a monster [Scylla], a villain [Medusa] or a bad wife [Helen]” (2020). Another prominent example is Madeline Miller’s novel Circe “which focuses on the eponymous Goddess-sorceress, previously a sidebar to Odysseus's adventures” (2020). We as receivers of art must challenge notions of the objectification and musing of women who deserve to tell, participate in, and analyze their own stories. We must listen and hone in on those who have been marginalized but are now rightfully getting their time in the sun.

Sources:

The Authors Reclaiming the Forgotten Voices of Ancient Women

 https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51756643

What Portrait of a Lady on Fire Tells Us About "the Gaze"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMUC584ppNQ&t=1s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus_and_Eurydice

The Problem with the Muse in Art History

https://www.artandobject.com/articles/problem-muse-art-history

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE Cast and Crew Q&A | TIFF 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88L8pIEr1nk

Gendered Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings

Susan M. Shaw, Janet Lee