Sean suggested
Hopefully, though, people would mean that, yes, those women
are powerful and not read anything else into it like "and that's as
powerful as women should get" or "and they're blessed to be that powerful". If
I were to read anything into these kinds of statements, I'd hope itcould be:
yes they're powerful, and it's a start and I recognize that at
the same time as I recognize that they're still not 'powerful' enough
because they're not considered equal with men's 'power'.
I was actually trying to get at the way the kind of women's power under
discussion is set up as dark and shadowy and sinister, and extremely scary,
and that these characteristics--which are presumably those of any group which
has means of gaining some access to acknowledged authority by manipulating
key individuals (e.g. attitude towards eunuchs at the Byzantine court)--tend
to be seen as those of all women in relation to power. Because the power is
not open and recognised there are no, or felt to be no, constraints upon
it--at least Margaret Thatcher could be voted out.
And on the latter topic, there was a little cluster of dystopian matriarchies
by British writers coming out around the late 80s, which struck me as perhaps
somewhat determined by the political ambience... the ones I particularly
remember actually being by female writers.
Lesley
Lesley_Hall@classic.msn.com
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