Ciao miei amici di 396a!

Hello 396 friends. Welcome to another femme fatale blog.

In today's segment we're looking further into "The Cult of Domesticity"! Yay!

I was fortunate enough to take a wonderful women's studies class at UA a few years ago. After I began researching the idea of domestic perception of my femme fatale character(s), I decided to consult back on my texts and information from that WS class to help guiding me towards helpful sources. Thankfully, I am one of those people that tends to keep text books from past courses, unless of course I have serious mental trauma or lingering feelings of hatred from the content. So, I found both some helpful information in Women's Studies: Gender in a Transnational World, as well as an article that touched on Early Industrial Development.

The text that really got me thinking into the Cult of Domesticity was within the Journal article mentioned above. Within it states, "the cult of domesticity developed as an ideological justification for separation of the genders and for the relegation of women to the domestic sphere. [...] Men are assigned responsibility for providing material support for their families; women are suited to perform domestic tasks. " The article goes on to talk about women being seen as "innately nurturing and passive" and men being "competitive and aggressive". These justifications were put in place to show that men were much more adept at succeeding in the public sphere, while women were more suited for the domestic sphere.

What I also found extremely interesting was the use of Darwinian theories which many used to justify these separations. Because of evolution and the competitive nature of men, they became the idea species to be within the workforce, and thusly women needed to be within the domestic sphere. This article touched on a great deal of information regarding the urban, economic and industrial states of the early period of the 20th century.

I really am in the early stages of putting together my research in regards to the gender dynamics in relations to Film Noir and the femme fatale, but I am extremely excited as to this new avenue of theory that has popped up! I think I need to organize my thoughts a little more, but I promise more is to come on this gender front. Also, I have a great friend and former water polo coach that graduated from U of A two years ago with a JD and a Master's in WS who I have set up a phone call with for Sunday. She will hopefully give me some good theorists to look into for my new research angle.

I've been really worried about my project in the last month or so because of my lack of focus. This renewal in research avenues has been refreshing and I can not wait to keep going! Hopefully I will have more to post in the coming days.