{"id":2890,"date":"2019-11-22T11:18:22","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/?p=2890"},"modified":"2020-09-24T00:32:03","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T04:32:03","slug":"blackstones-sister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/2019\/11\/22\/blackstones-sister\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackstone’s Sister"},"content":{"rendered":"
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh<\/a><\/p>\n

BOOK \u00a0the First. \u00a0Chapter the Fourth. \u00a0Of the KING\u2019s Royal FAMILY.<\/em><\/a><\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
\n

This short chapter<\/a>\u00a0is mostly about queens. \u00a0Blackstone explains that there are three kinds. \u00a0Most of the chapter is about the queen\u00a0consort<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 \u00a0the wife of the king. \u00a0The others are the queen\u00a0dowager<\/em>\u00a0(the king\u2019s widow) and the queen\u00a0regent, regnant\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0sovereign<\/em>, who holds the crown in her own right and \u201chas the same powers, prerogatives, rights, dignities, and duties, as if she had been a king\u201d (p. 212). \u00a0Blackstone describes some of the ways queens\u2019 legal status differs from that of ordinary women \u2014 and why. \u00a0He explains, for instance, that unlike other married women the queen consort is allowed to own property, in order not to burden the king with her affairs\u00a0(pp. 212-13). But he doesn\u2019t offer a reason why at a time when ordinary married women lost all public and legal identity, the queen regnant actually got to be the most public person of all \u2014 that is, the king.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s because in some ways a king is more like a girl than a man. \u00a0Both kings and girls live life more from the outside in, more as the object of knowledge, curiosity and reverance than the one who knows, inquires or reveres \u2014 more seen than seeing. \u00a0To paraphrase\u00a0Catherine MacKinnon\u2019s famous line<\/a>,\u00a0one\u2019s body is, for both girls and kings,\u00a0that which is at once most one\u2019s self and least one\u2019s own.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m speaking, of course, in generalities \u2014 skipping over individual differences and, maybe more important, centuries of change. \u00a0Still, ruminating on the Queen Regnant, I find myself in a place where I seem to end up again and again \u2014 staring in disbelief at how little change there seems to have been, really, about this business of women\u2019s bodies. \u00a0Whatever else has changed for girls and women since Blackstone\u2019s time, and whatever we individually choose to make of those changed opportunities, our appearance is\u00a0invested with meaning. \u00a0Like kings, from infancy our bodies are the subject of much more attention than the average man\u2019s\u2013 both other people\u2019s and our own.<\/p>\n

Eight years ago (can it really be that long now?), when my daughter was a new baby girl,\u00a0I\u00a0was struck by the intensity and persistence of our society\u2019s attention to feminine appearance. \u00a0Over forty myself, and thus having stepped well out of the spotlight shown on young women\u2019s bodies, I was shocked by the extremity of the responses my curly-headed tot elicited. Strangers would drop to their knees before her stroller on the sidewalk and cry \u201coh, what a beautiful little girl.\u201d \u00a0(I should explain here that while my daughter is a perfectly nice-looking little girl, she is in no sense spectacularly or even unusually beautiful. \u00a0And, indeed, I soon noticed that most little girls receive these accolades.) \u00a0Every piece of clothing and physical attribute is ritually catalogued and celebrated \u2014 \u201cthat\u2019s a pretty dress,\u201d \u201cooh, look at those sparkly shoes,\u201d \u201cwhat long lashes she has. . . \u00a0those cheeks, her smile . . . .\u201d Or the whole package may be lauded together. \u00a0To this day a neighbor, himself a strikingly tall, white-haired man reputed to have once been Mayor Lindsay\u2019s bodyguard, hails my daughter from his yard as she walks by on her way to school \u2014 \u201cHello, Miss Lovely\u201d!<\/p>\n

He seems like a really nice man. \u00a0And I feel churlish for even suggesting there\u2019s anything wrong with the well-intentioned appreciation he and other well meaning people have lavished on my child. \u00a0One of the great joys of having a child is the way the quotidian world cracks opens and serves up this amazing outpouring of appreciation and, yes, love. \u00a0But isn\u2019t it obvious that being showered with this kind of \u00a0attention before you can even speak is going to set you on a course quite different from the one you would be inclined to take if you were not constantly being reminded of how important your appearance is?<\/p>\n

Not to everyone, apparently. \u00a0At the same time all this was going on I was having conversations at the swing set with other 21st-century liberal moms who were saying things like, \u201cyou know, it really is amazing how different they [i.e., boys and girls] are; we\u2019re always trying to give her trucks, but she really is only interested in dolls.\u201d \u00a0 The idea that girls \u201chave naturally, that is from their birth, independent of education, a fondness for dolls, dressing, and talking\u201d was already subject to critique in Blackstone\u2019s time.\u00a0Mary Wollstonecraft (quoted in the previous sentence), considered this viewpoint, which she attributed to Rousseau, among others, \u201cso puerile as not to merit a serious refutation.\u201d \u00a0A Vindication of the Rights of Woman\u00a0<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(Ch. III) (1791). \u00a0Noting that she \u201cprobably had an opportunity of observing more girls in their infancy than J.J. Rousseau,\u201d she contended that girls\u2019 fondness for dressing up their dolls basically reflected the interest all the grown ups around them showed in dressing up the girls.\u00a0Id.<\/em>\u00a0Two hundred years later on the playground in Brooklyn I had nothing to add to that argument, and it was just about as effective as it had been in Blackstone\u2019s and Wollstonecraft\u2019s England.<\/p>\n

Of course some things are different now, among them the fact that women can be lawyers and law professors and publish writing about law. \u00a0(Although, I note that in a\u00a0recent survey\u00a0<\/a>of the top 10 most cited law professors, not one is a woman.) I wonder how our different treatment of little girls and boys physical appearance is implicated in the ongoing professional gender divide. \u00a0In particular I wonder if it is part of why we are not producing more women mathematicians, scientists and engineers. \u00a0It strikes me that in the quantitative world of lab science, hard drives, and pure math, there is so little narrativity that the presentational self all but disappears, at least until the point at which a few stars emerge to win prizes. In professions women have entered in large numbers \u2014 doctor, lawyer, professor \u2014 physical presentation of self is definitely part of the game. \u00a0To be sure, that presentation is a source of conflict and confusion for professional women. (Must I wear a skirt for that appellate argument or do I chance the pants suit?) But it may be even harder and more confusing to find one\u2019s way in a profession that virtually does away with physical image. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The sheer anonymity may be too hard for women to accept. \u00a0It may be impossible for most young women to imagine themselves into these disembodied roles \u2014 both because they sense they will fail at the requirement of corporeal invisibility and because they are afraid that if they do succeed, they will be totally erased.<\/p>\n

So far, I\u2019ve been writing as if I lived somewhere apart from the feminine attachment to physical appearance that I\u2019ve been describing. Of course it is not so. \u00a0Nor is it the case that I always experience that attachment as onerous. \u00a0Sometimes it seems like this life on the outside gives women an opportunity that men lack to connect more readily with other people. Actually, it can really cheer you up.<\/p>\n

On my way home recently from a meeting in Washington, D.C. \u00a0I stepped up to the Amtrak counter, to change my ticket for an earlier train. \u00a0The ticket agent looked weary, already yawning at nine in the morning. \u00a0He punched up the numbers for my exchange, took my credit card and asked me for the obligatory post 9\/11 picture ID, which I produced. \u00a0Glancing at it, he remarked, \u201cgood looking.\u201d \u00a0I was feeling depressed. \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s an old picture,\u201d I said. \u00a0At this, something in this man woke up. \u00a0Looking me in the eye he said, \u201cWell, now that\u2019s something they can\u2019t take away from you. \u00a0If you got it, you got it.\u201d \u00a0The kindness of his statement was all the more apparent because the statement was so obviously untrue. \u00a0After all, physical beauty is quintessentially, paradigmatically transient \u2014 the part of one\u2019s self that time most certainly does carry away. \u00a0For some reason it makes me think of something I only just found out about physical identity \u2014 that it is not in fact only skin deep. \u00a0A friend who is having to go through a slew of internal medical examinations tells me that one of her too many doctors explained that people\u2019s insides are as different from one another as their faces. \u00a0It turns out that the shape and spatial relationship of a person\u2019s heart, lungs and liver are as much her own as the parts of her that are more routinely visible. \u00a0I find this comforting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh BOOK \u00a0the First. \u00a0Chapter the Fourth. \u00a0Of the KING\u2019s Royal FAMILY. This short chapter\u00a0is mostly about queens. \u00a0Blackstone explains that there are three kinds. \u00a0Most of...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,255,492],"tags":[132,200],"class_list":["post-2890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jurisprudence","category-law-and-philosophy","category-william-blackstone","tag-news","tag-william-blackstone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pasVL2-KC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2890"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3014,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890\/revisions\/3014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}