Wednesday, September 12, 2012

This Week's Art

Mariana by John Everett Millais
This painting is an allegory of Victorian sexual repression and the longings of women trapped in dreary lives. Mariana is a character from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, a play that satirises sexual hypocrisy. Millais’ contemporary, the poet laureate, Alfred Tennyson, laments the domestic incarceration of Shakespeare’s character in his poem Mariana, which Millais quoted when he unveiled this painting: "She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, / I would that I were dead!’"
 
For an audio art tour about the Pre-Raphaelite at Tate Britain, click here.

Source: The Guardian Newspaper

3 comments:

  1. This summer I saw a play about Shakespeare´s Women.The plot was that behind the domestic role the women were who really decide what to do. The player is called " El Brujo". It is based in a book written by Harold Bloom.
    (The pictures are amazing)

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  2. I saw it, too, at the Teatro Cuyas. I loved it! And I was delighted at how well I was able to follow the narrative in Spanish! There is also an important essay written by Virginia Woolf entitled, "If Shakespeare had had a Sister". In it, she explores whether it would have been possible for a woman living in Shakespeare's time and with the same talent as the Bard to have succeeded in the same career. The answer is: "No!".

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  3. I´m sorry, I disagree. In one of my favourite tragedies, the men are puppets manipulated by three Witches and Lady Macbeth.

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