Abstract

Dutch seventeenth-century depictions of women necessarily involve the domestic setting. The home is the domain of the woman and her presence is essential to its smooth running. Through careful analysis of the evidence presented in the subject matter and symbolism of Dutch seventeenth-century paintings, this paper argues that these scenes do not depict real women, but rather invented roles that are devised to represent certain feelings and associations towards the notion of home. Despite the keen interest Dutch artists display in naturalistic detail and mannerisms, these women to do not represent themselves and their individual personalities, but certain connotations the painting imparts to the viewer. The following argument will investigate these multifarious connotations, ranging from the idealisation to the demonization of women as depicted by Dutch artists. The essay begins by addressing the significant number of domestic genre paintings of the seventeenth century that are informed by an idealisation of the home and the roles women enact within them. By acting out these roles, the women in domestic scenes embody a system of beliefs and values about the way women should behave. Drawing on contemporary texts, this paper will argue that paintings by artists such as Pieter de Hooch can be seen to depict women as secular Virgins or moral exemplars, instructing real women in the proper way to maintain a household. Even in paintings by female artists, which depict a more realistic account of the hardship and obstacles in womens lives, there is frequently a moralising agenda informing them. At the other end of the spectrum this thesis proves that women in paintings by artists such as Jan Steen and Gerrit Dou put forward a vision of the female specifically for the enjoyment and derision of the male gaze. However, it would be reductive to 1

assume that Dutch women, who exerted a relative power in comparison to their European contemporaries, had little or no response to the subject matter of Dutch genre scenes. Housewives and young girls could compare their lives to the women depicted in paintings, deriving pleasure from seeing a task done successfully and entertainment from sleeping maids and the cavorting couples. Such deportment implies a suspicion within Dutch society that the two identities of prostitute and virgin could exist within the one woman. In a significant departure from the traditional interpretation of the symbolic role of women in Dutch interior painting, this study focuses on the female body as a metaphor for the health of the Dutch nation during times of political uncertainty. By suggesting the fears of the nation in a metaphorical female form and imbuing it with humour, the viewer can achieve emotional control over it and evade the seriousness of the danger. The role of the female in seventeenth-century domestic scenes is manifold. Women are deployed to embody certain fears, virtues or hopes for Dutch society. This paper will attest that, despite their singular importance to the genre, they are never represented as real women that stand for nothing but themselves.

Discuss the role of women in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings of domestic subjects.

Dutch seventeenth-century depictions of women necessarily involve the domestic setting. The home is the domain of the woman and her presence is essential to its smooth running. Domestic scenes comprise a very diverse genre, in which women have many differing roles to play, from cooking and cleaning to writing letters and enjoying music and company. These scenes do not depict real women however, but invented roles that are devised to represent certain feelings and associations towards the notion of home. Despite the keen interest Dutch artists display in naturalistic detail and mannerisms, these women to do not represent themselves and their individual personalities, but certain connotations the painting imparts to the viewer. A significant number of domestic genre paintings of the seventeenth century are informed by an idealisation of the home and the roles women enact within them. Women are frequently represented sewing, sweeping, cooking, writing, and caring for children, ordinary situations to evoke a sense of security, stability and wholesomeness. By acting out these roles, the women in domestic scenes embody a system of beliefs and values about the way women should behave, that were entrenched in every level of Dutch society.1 In Pieter de Hoochs Mother and Child by a Window with a Woman Sweeping (c.1655-57) a mother nurses a child in a comfortable Dutch interior while another woman, presumably a maid, sweeps the floor in the shadowy foreground. The entire scene is pervaded with an atmosphere of serenity and quietude, from the calmly nursing baby, to the steady to-ing and fro-ing of the maids sweeping movements. The painting of the crucified Christ behind the mother and child, added to the soft fall of
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Frantis, W. E. Paragons of Virtue (Cambridge: 1993) p. 2

light from the window to the right that illuminates them, evokes an awareness in the viewer that this is a scene of sanctity. The sacrifice of Christ has cleansed the world of its sin, and the maids continuous cleaning ensures that it does not return to this home. In paintings such as de Hoochs, the home is represented as the necessary opposite to the dangers of the world beyond the threshold.2 It is the womans role to maintain this purity within the households depicted, by keeping out the corruptions of the world. The real women of the Dutch Republic (1581-1795) would have had this same role to play in upholding the integrity of their own households in which these paintings hung. Through an examination of contemporary publications, such as Jacob Cats Houweyck (Marriage first published in 1625) it is clear that, as with other countries in Europe, there were certain expectations on how women were to look and behave in Dutch society.3 Cats book operates as a how-to manual on the various stages in a womans life, with a particular emphasis being placed on caring for the home. It is a traditional art historical view that domestic genre paintings were intended to offer a similar educational role. The virtuous women of domestic genre scenes can be seen to function as secular Virgins or moral exemplars, inspiring virtue in their beholders and instructing real women in the proper way to maintain a household.4 One of the most often repeated motifs of domestic virtue is the image of a woman engaged in needlework,5 as it was believed that assiduous activity would overcome all vices.6 This lesson was made abundantly clear in the paintings that address the sinful consequences of a woman who rejected her natural roles as a housewife and mother. In Jan Steens Dissolute Household (c.1668) the viewer is confronted with a scene of domestic uproar
Frantis, W. E. 1992 p. 3 Ibid p. 6 4 Muizelaar, K. & Phillips, D. Picturing Men and Women in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, London: 2003) p. 120 5 Chadwick, W. Women, Art and Society (London: 2007) p. 120 6 Frantis, W. E. 1992 p. 26
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in which the order of the de Hooch scene above has been entirely upturned. The adults who should be upholding domestic harmony have all abandoned their duties for selfindulgence. The man of the house flirts with a woman, his leg upon her lap, and enjoys a plate of oysters. Meanwhile other adults play music in the background, children steal from the pockets of their mother, overturned unwashed bowls and plates are licked by the dog, and a monkey plays with the clock by the door. Through all this chaos the woman of the house sleeps. The message is clear; when she is not in control, the chaos of the outside world creeps into her domestic haven. Although it is compelling to think of the women in such paintings as The Dissolute Household as providing instructive lessons for female viewers, seventeenthcentury art treatises make no mention of didactic functions for paintings, nor is there any documentary evidence to suggest that female, or indeed male viewers, drew such meanings from domestic genres.7 On the contrary, scenes such as this, as well as the many depictions of maids dozing in the kitchen, provide a humorous engagement with the power of women within the home and the dangers their behaviour can pose to its stability if they so wish, revealing the fluctuating attitudes towards women at the time.8 How did women respond to these dual pressures of idealisation and demonization? It is very difficult to find an answer to this question as any account of women is usually written from a male point of view.9 It is established, however, that Dutch women did possess a relative power in society in comparison to women in other European countries during the seventeenth century, suggesting that they may have had some say in the paintings that were bought for the home. Most women were literate and had

Muizelaar, K. & Phillips, D. 2003 p. 123 Schama, S. Wives and Wantons: Versions of Womanhood in 17th Century Dutch Art (Oxford Art Journal: 1980) p. 5 9 Van Duersen, A.T. Plain Lives in a Golden Age (Cambridge: 1991) p. 81
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certain rights to property and fair treatment under the law.10 It was also generally accepted that women were not absolutely subject to the authority of their husbands.11 The power of women is portrayed humorously in Jan Miense Molenaers Sense of Touch (1637) where the husband meekly offers up his trousers to his wife while she prepares to beat him mercilessly with a clog.12 It could therefore be argued that women depicted in Dutch domestic scenes had a role to play in appealing to female viewers. Honig asserts that women were in fact frequently the purchasers of art, and that paintings had to have qualities that a woman would wish to integrate into the domestic world that she controlled and inhabited.13 Housewives and young girls could compare their lives to the women depicted in paintings, deriving pleasure from seeing a task done successfully and entertainment from the sleeping maids and the cavorting couples. It has been argued by Alpers and others that Dutch artistic practice was far more sympathetic to the depiction of women than other contemporary artistic traditions. In such paintings as The Letter Reader (1655-50) by Johannes Vermeer, the female subject who reads a letter by the window is turned away from the viewer and is thus endowed with her own self-possession and psychological dimension that is kept beyond the reach of the viewers gaze.14 Peacock maintains that paintings like The Letter Reader offer evidence that the role of female subjects was to satisfy a genuine curiosity about the lives women lead.15 However, even if such a curiosity did exist, it is important to note that these scenes were not at all faithful depictions of the reality of everyday life. Even in paintings

Schama, S. 1980 p. 6 Van Duersen, A.T. 1991 p. 84 12 It is interesting to note that Jan Miense Molenaer was married to the female painter Judith Leyster. 13 Honig E, A. in Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting (Cambridge: 1997) p. 194 14 Alpers, S. in Feminism and Art History: questioning the litany (Cambridge, Mass., London: 1982) p. 196 15 Peacock, M. M. in Saints, Sinners, and Sisters : gender and northern art in medieval and early modern Europe (Aldershot: 2003) p. 50
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by female artists, which depicted a more realistic account of the hardship and obstacles in womens lives, there is frequently a moralising agenda informing them. In Geertruydt Roghmans series of engravings (printed c.1640) of household tasks such as pot cleaning, pancake cooking and sewing, the women depicted adopt bent and strained poses, emphasising their industriousness and hard work. Similarly, Judith Leysters Proposition highlights the moral integrity of the sewing woman who rejects the leering advances of the man over her shoulder. The women depicted by both these artists turn away from the viewer and refuse to make themselves available to scrutiny. While an initial viewing may suggest an attempt to prevent women from being objectified by the viewer, on the contrary the role of such female subjects is not to portray their individual personalities but to embody a virtue, whether the hard work ethic of Roghman and the moral integrity of Leyster. This issue of objectification necessarily raises the question of the male gaze upon the domestic interior. By contrast to Peacock, Helgerson argues that it was men, and not in fact women, who were the primary spectators of domestic genre paintings.16 Gerrit Dous A Lady Playing a Clavichord (c.1665) is one of a significant number of paintings where it is the role of the woman, and the domestic space she represents, to invite an ostensively male gaze into the scene. The young woman at the clavichord engages eyecontact with the viewer as if expecting a response, while the viola da gamba and the glass of wine lie waiting for the viewer to pick up and join in. It is perhaps in this sort of male involvement in the domestic scene that the dichotomy of home and world becomes most salient. Whether they are physically in the painting or merely an absent presence implied by a portrait on the wall or a cloak

Helerson, R. Soldiers and Enigmatic Girls: The Politics of Dutch Domestic Realism, 1650-1672 (Representations: 1997) p. 55
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thrown over a chair, men enter the womans domain only as guests. Their presence represents the public world and the realities of life, such as politics, war, and economics, which upset the purity of the home and thus blend the categories of genre. Even the beholders act of looking is an intrusion that may alter the harmony women instil in the domestic setting. Gerard ter Borchs Parental Admonition (c.1654-55) plays on this anxiety by presenting a domestic scene with two seated adults and a standing girl that could indicate a discussion of betrothal, or equally a transaction in brothel scene. The traditional interpretation, as suggested by the title, cannot be accepted when the tiny visual clue of the coin poised between the soldiers thumb and forefinger is taken into account. The girl does not necessarily allow for the brothel interpretation however as her bent head and attentive stance entails a more formal setting than a brothel. Her deportment implies a suspicion within Dutch society that the two identities of prostitute and virgin could exist within the one woman.17 It is the role of the girl in this painting to have these anxieties projected onto her and given visual expression in her form. The honesty of male and female relationships was not the only concern during the seventeenth century that was embodied in the female form. In a book written by Johan van Beverwijck entitled On the Excellence of the Female Sex (from 1639) the home and the housewife are portrayed as a metaphoric microcosm of the Dutch Republic, in which female governance is necessary for a well-ordered society.18 By representing at once home and the homeland, women in Dutch domestic scenes are not just passive symbols, but active participants in narrative scenes and have the power to maintain or subvert the republic they represent.19
Schama, S. 1980 p. 13 Peacock, M.M. 2003 p. 56 19 Helgerson, R. 1997 p. 64
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In Nicolaes Maes The Eavesdropper (1657) the home has been infiltrated by a soldier who leaves his sword and red cloak by the door and descends through to the back of the house to where he finds a maid to grope. The soldiers coarse behaviour, along with the cat that steals the food in the kitchen in the right background, is an expression of the political uncertainty during the seventeenth century when mercenary soldiers who were hired to protect the independent state in turn became a threat when they themselves became numerous enough during times of peace to take over the republic.20 The map hanging above the soldiers cloak alludes to the national selfconsciousness that permeates the scene.21 The home is presented as a female body, an internal enclosed space that invites the eye to enter its open doors and progress through its unobstructed corridor and staircase.22 The turning point of this scene is the housewife who lingers at the bottom of the staircase to overhear the interaction between the maid and the soldier. The woman looks at the viewer with a knowing smile, as if to indicate her acquiescence to the soldiers presence and her failure to guard the purity of her private world, and by extension, the Dutch Republic in general. Similarly to The Dissolute Home discussed above, The Eavesdropper provides the viewer with the opportunity to enjoy the moral uncertainties the painting raises.23 By depicting the threat in female form and imbuing it with humour, the viewer can achieve emotional control over it and evade the seriousness of the danger.24 The role of the female form in seventeenth-century domestic scenes is manifold. Women are deployed as instruments to embody certain fears, virtues or hopes for Dutch society. They can be cast in as diverse roles as maids, mothers, prostitutes,

Helgerson, R. 1997 p. 62 Ibid p. 66 22 Honig p. 196 23 Helgerson, R. 1997 p. 54 24 Ibid p. 62

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judicators, and Dame Hollandia. This paper has established that, despite their singular importance to the genre, they are never represented as real women that stand for nothing but themselves.

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Bibliography
Alpers, Svetlana Art History and its Exclusions: The example of Dutch Art in Broude, Norma & Garrard, Mary D. Feminism and Art History: questioning the litany Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harper & Row, 1982. Brown, Christopher Scenes of Everyday Life: Dutch genre painting of the seventeenth century London: Faber, 1984. Chadwick, Whitney Women, Art and Society London: Thames & Hudson, 2007. Fox Hofrichter, Frima Judith Leysters Proposition: between virtue and vice in Broude, Norma & Garrard, Mary D. Feminism and Art History: questioning the litany Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harper & Row, 1982, pp. 173-182. Frantis, Wayne E. Paragons of Virtue: Women and Domesticity in 17th Century Dutch Art Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Helgerson, Richard Soldiers and Enigmatic Girls: The Politics of Dutch Domestic Realism, 1650-1672 Representations No. 58 (Spring, 1997) pp. 49-87. Honig, Elizabeth Alice The Space of Gender in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting in Frantis, Wayne E. (ed.) Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 186-199. Muizelaar, Klaske & Phillips, Derek Picturing Men and Women in the Dutch Golden Age: paintings and people in historical perspective New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2003. Peacock, Martha Moffitt Domesticity in the Public Sphere in Carroll, Jane L. & Stewart, Alison G. (eds.) Saints, Sinners, and Sisters : gender and northern art in medieval and early modern Europe Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Schama, Simon Wives and Wantons: Versions of Womanhood in 17th Century Dutch Art Oxford Art Journal Vol. 3, No. 1, Women in Art (Apr., 1980) pp. 5-13. Schama, Simon The Embarrassment of Riches: an interpretation of Dutch culture in the golden age London: Fontana, 1988, c1987. Van Duersen, A.T Plain Lives in a Golden Age Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

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