Male Gaze

Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems Author(s): Edward Snow Source: Representations, No. 25 (Winter, 1989), pp.
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[Those forwhom thereis so much rejoicingwillsighin theirhearts,and tears will gush from their eyes. Psyche, the soul of love, entered marriage in mourning. It is a great bereavementto leave the place of one's birth.Girls, look, listen:foryour understanding, you willfindhusbands who are triumphant demigods; foryour sighs,subjectsand royalpower; in brief,foryour tears and marriage-flowers, laughterand the beautifulfruit of children.My translation] Alaigresde Navi&res, Les Alliances royales etreiouissances publiques precedentes lessolennitez du mariage desplus celebres etaugustes desenfans Roysde l'Europe(Lyons, 1612), 30. The undress of the daughtersof Leucippus is of course entirely appropriate in a mythological scene,and particularly an eroticone. But in contrasting thenude women to the attiredmen, perhaps Rubens also meant to call to mind ancientand traditional marriage customs wherein the bride is strippedof the clothes she bringsfrom her parents'home before donning new garmentsprovided by the husband. As marriage ethnologistshave shown, the bride's divestitureof her old garments signifiesher of birth,prior to her of her old roles as daughter and sisterin her family divestiture induction into her new roles of wifeand motherin the household of her husband. "The GriseldaComplex,"in Women, andRitual,225. ChristianeKlapisch-Zuber, Family, 78. The pose of the higher sisterduplicates the coital pose of Michelangelo's Leda (as ArthurK. Wheelock,Jr.,notes,in Masterworks from Munich,107), thereby heightening the sense of the eroticexpectationof the moment. etlajeunessede LouisXIII, ed. E. de 79. Jean H1roard,Journal deJeanHeroardsur lenfance Souli6 and E. de Barthelemy, 2 vols. (Paris, 1868), 2:183-86. 80. It was not until25 January 1619 thathe venturedto bed withhis wifeagain (and this time,as well,withgreat reluctance); ibid., 2:229-30. See discussionin Pierre Chevalher,LouisXIII: Roi cornelien (Paris, 1977), 101.
EDWARD
SNOW
Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems

"the male gaze"-and some of the best recent feministanalyses of visual material,in my opinion, have been objecare almostsure to appear: voyeurism, concerned to do so-certain motifs scopophilia, woman as the object of male pleasure and the fetishism, tification, bearer of male lack, etc. Masculine vision is almost invariablycharacterizedas Whateverin the gaze and itsconstrucideological,and phallocentric. patriarchal, is usually assimilatedto issues of female spectatortions escapes this definition analyses,remainsa fixedand almost ship. "Male," even in the mostsophisticated it as GaylynStudlar has observed, that seems, At times term. entirelynegative the female can functionfor the male onlyas an object of sadistic spectatorial I possession. And positionshave to be builtwithpartialtruths. Perhaps all powerfulcritical
WHEN FEMINISM CHARACTERIZES
30
REPRESENTATIONS
readings. Probablythe ground-breaking thisone continuesto produce brilliant, of male-engenderedimages of women deserve itspointof view.But vastmajority of course,but also I stillfeel discomfited-as a male viewerframedbythe theory, as someone whose own work has long been drawn to feminism.It seems to me agent thatsuch a theorycan-and in practiceoftendoes-become an unwitting of the veryforcesof surveillanceitwishesto oppose. Crucial as the unmaskingof motivesmay be, the demystifying project patriarchal/ideological/pornographic being understood in those runs the riskof occluding whateverin the gaze resists elementswithinvision thatelude or strainagainst the ideoterms.The fugitive thatseeks to expose the logical can all too easilyget ground up in the machinery as a simulacrum ideological, so that the criticalapparatus winds up functioning Nothingcould betterserve and supplement of the ideological apparatus itself.2 to the termsof the paternal superego than to reduce masculinevisioncompletely power, violence, and control, to make disappear whatever in the male gaze damaging,and and pronounce outlawed,guilty, remainsoutside the patriarchal, on such grounds that illicitly possessiveeverymale viewof woman. It is precisely not attuned and maintainsitselfin vision.A feminism the father'slaw institutes ratherthan the abrogator risksbecoming the instrument to internaldifference of thatlaw. take up the femThe paradox can become especiallystarkwhen male critics inistcritique-sometimes witha vengeance. All too oftenin such criticism-from to Klaus Theweleit's Idols ofPerversity simplistic Bram Dijkstra'sdishearteningly formidablycomplex Male Fantasies-it is clear that the superego is in control, it seeks to enactingat the level of analysisthe aggressionand desire formastery of and male in Under the excoriating aegis demystifying criticize the subject.3 deprives images of women of theirsubjectiveor vision,the criticsystematically undecidable aspects-to say nothingof theirpower-and at the same timeelimwith, inates fromthe onlooking "male" ego whateverelementsof identification to the femininesuch images bespeak. sympathy for,or vulnerability in whatescapes For all the powerof the theory, then,I remainmostinterested it. My own instinct is for the exceptions,and formodes of close reading thatare willingto give them equal time.Theory seems alwaysto choose its paradigms as shed the aura instancesof what it already knows.Its analysesseldom completely itstreatment of detailssubjectto strict controland fitted to a of a demonstration, prior frame.While it would be naive to suggestthatone can be withouta theory, I would stilllike to thinkthat one could proceed in a different spirit,resisting ideological (fore)closureand treatingone's initialterms-"male" and "female," for instance-as subject to revision. It mighteven be possible to choose one's paradigms out of trust,and followtheirlead in hopes of arrivingat something not fullyimaginable in advance. The enterprisemay seem quixotic,but a hermeneuticsof suspicioncan takeus onlyso far.Even at thislate date itmayrequire to make contactwiththe images thatmatterto somethinglike negativecapability us most. Art Engendering 31
For the remainderof thispaper I would like to tryout such an approach on Venus(fig. 1), one of the most complex "exceptions"in all Velazquez's Rokeby we thinkwe know Renaissance art. This paintingmakes us reconsidereverything in desire. And yetitsdifferences are anything about "the gaze" and itspositioning but obvious. Indeed, at firstglance it may seem a lost cause. It situates itself squarely in the high Renaissance traditionof the recliningfemale nude, and is thus subject to all that now makes us rightfully suspicious of thattradition.But a strongrevisionary one should recognize,along withthecontext, aspect. Indeed, at Her Toilet-the beautifulCarracci juxtaposed witha typicalRenaissance Venus as to in Washington,for instance (fig.2)-the Velazquez may seem so different be almost "about" different things: not adornmentbut disencumberment;not but solitude;thebody notas objectbutas span. Gauged bythese self-centeredness differences, Velazquez's intentwould seem almost to be to divorce his painting fromitsgenre's themes. The closer the correspondence, the more intricatethis revisionary aspect at HerMirror becomes. Consider,forinstance,Rubens'sVenus (fig.3), a paintingI Venus's am tempted to regard as the Rokeby specificother.The Velazquez's rearrangement of the Rubens's key elements amounts to a critique of the latter's ocular dynamics,and beyond that to an easing of its anxieties,perhaps even a
FIGURE
1. Velazquez, TheToilet ("The RokebyVenus"). ofVenus Reproduced bycourtesythe Trustees,The National Gallery,London.
32
REPRESENTATIONS
2 (above).Annibale Carracci, Venus Adorned bythe Graces.National Galleryof Art,Washington, D.C., Samuel H. Kress Collection. FIGURE 3 (left). Rubens, Venus Looking in a Mirror. Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein, Vaduz Castle.
FIGURE
Art Engendering
33
lifting of its curse. The Rubens's crowded, obsessive foregrounding, its fixated authorial/spectatorial involvement, the overdetermined genderingof itsviewing position,and the fierce,anxious attachment of the image to that"male" placeall are revisedto the pointof disappearance byVelazquez's spacings,dispersions, and re- or mis-alignments. Compared to the Rubens, the Rokeby Venus, in all her looked-at-ness, scarcelyseems subject any longer to the gaze, which in any case but singularand controlling, seems anything much less self-evidently male. And all this is accessible to us even at the level of a first look, before we registerthe more intricate discrepanciesof the image. in thisrespectwithManet's Olympia One mightcontrastthe Rokeby Venus (fig. confrontational 4). We tend todayto feelin tune withthe latter's strategies, about which we writebrilliantly. But our iconoclasmand ingraineddistrust may make us easy game forimages like this.Is it necessarily more "radical" than the Velatzquez? The Manet reversesthe power relations, and turnsthevisualdynamicback on the male viewer, severinghis cathexiswiththe objectand turninghis pleasure into discomfiture. But it leaves the structure of the viewingsituationunchanged, and in a devious sense even reinforces culturalperceptions-sexual misogynistic for instance. It also leaves unquestioned the hypothetical woman as prostitute, maleness of the viewer'sgaze. It may,in fact,even hypermasculinize the genre. Isolating the viewerin his maleness is one way of confirming that the vieweris male. It eliminatesthe room women are able to findeven in a Titian reclining nude for theirown spectatorial pleasure, even to the exclusion and exasperation men. Beyond thisit fixesthe viewerin the viewing of men-especially feminist place, and determinesthe depicted woman strictly as the object of "his" gazeeven if an insolentand disruptiveobject. Anycrossingover via empathyor idenor any zone of subjectivity outside the subject-object tification (howeverfugitive), is effectively foreclosed.The Velazquez, on the other hand, with confrontation, its more subtle inner calibrations, may open thingsmore radically-the place of viewingas well as the scene depicted. And itssplittings may,in a complex sense, effect a rapprochement-one viable to us even now. It is not at all clear to me, at least,whichsex is more at home before thisimage. is byluringus into One of the waysthe Velazquez opens the viewingsituation the same withthe object of vision-serenely constructing a bodily identification "blocks."Withher back double relationthatthe Rubens anxiouslyand obsessively turned, spanning the frame fromfoot to elbow,her mirrorbeckoningbeyond, his Venus seems calculated to trigger-over againstthe desire for possession-a "migrating"impulse. Her body unfolds not just as object but as horizon and and it is as the lattermore than the formerthatit lures us-not, dimensionality, intensefemalenudes (I am thinking as in so manyof Picasso'smostkinesthetically especially of the figuresof the early 1930s), into a fantasyof abjectedness,but into a momentof bodily sovereignty touchingdown here, and at the same time turned elsewhere,opening out beyond. The long lines, the bounded muscula34
REPRESENTATIONS
FIGURE
Musp Olympia. 4. Manet,
d'Orsay,Paris.
ture, the sensual contactof fleshand fabric:all appeal less to visual delectation thatcause bodies to identify instincts kinesthetic than to those gender-indifferent is especiallytrueat the far This feel. they what withother bodies, and to imagine points of the span, where the body makes contactwithitselfin waysthatinvite the underalmostto the exclusionof vision:on the left, identification kinesthetic lyingrightfoot (opticallyunreadable as such) feelingthe overlappingcrush of knee and thigh;4on the right,the hand (invisibleto the gaze) supporting the weightof the head and in turn subsumed by the lucid, upswept hair. Even the area beneath the left thigh seems to warmof its own accord into a deeper, not so much voyeuristically more shadowed hue-an undeniablysensual effect experience un-self-conscious own private, body's within the felt from as observed of itself. Venusis sometimescompared unfavorablyto the other great The Rokeby Velazquezes on thebasis of whatis seen to be itsdull, uninspiredrenderingof the whatVelazquez does notwantto conseems to me exactly woman'sflesh.But flesh The body needs to catch our eyes not as vey.(Here too Rubens is the antithesis.) thatwould gestalt.Local effects surfacebut as locus and horizon,a kindof figural excite visual interestor fantasiesof touch mustbe dampened so that the kinesonto theticimaginationcan carryus across. Velazquez even displaces such effects the brilliance-note with special them surrounding objects, and accomplishes frame-as ifto make sure we underribbon,forinstance,thatdrapes themirror's downplaysthem. stand thatin the renderingof thewoman'sbody he deliberately Art Engendering 35
The genderedness of the viewing situation is also complicated at its periphery.For if a "female" othernessis the locus of (male) desire in this scene, it it. (And so "male" and "female"begin to seem unwieldy also framesand mirrors requiringelaboratenotation:on theone hand blockagesthat and obstinateterms, obscure a complex situation,on the other indispensablecategoriesthat supply passion and motiveforce.)The face in the painting'smirrorhas a disconcerting tendencyto gaze-without the knowledgeof the woman fromwhom it apparwithknowingintimacy (fig.5). entlyderives-directly into the eyes of the viewer, Like the more famous mirrorin the farbackgroundof Las Meninas(fig.6), itcan our seem to cut through the middle realm of images and address us directly, in gender and selfhood mirrors, fact, question and counterpart. Both opposite simultaneously:note how the one in Las Meninas,aimed towardthe place of the sovereignviewer,findsthere not a single male but man and woman, a married of theirpainted image pair-and not even their real presence but a reflection (fig. 7).5 And more precisely:not man and woman but woman and man, since of left-to-rightness convention inverts is thepatriarchal one of the thingsa mirror that governsimages in reality. The female viewermay not be exactlyprivileged withinthis mirror'sframe,but her image does seem stillunreached by the eerie spectral fading thatalready in the lower righthas erased most of the male sovereign'sbody. image has a tendencyto detach in desire,the mirror's And as our counterpart herself from the woman from whom she apparentlyderives and, assuming a bemusedly-much as we in desire, to gaze on her intently, pleasurably, priority do. The woman, meanwhile,seems to remain apart, satisfiedwiththe distance notice thatseparates her fromher image,takingperhaps onlyvague or distracted
FIGURE
5. Velazquez, The Toilet (detail). ofVenus
36
RERESENTAT
. _L _ * _ ?!~MO
..
36~
REPESETATON
FIGURES
detail (right). Prado, 6 and 7. Velazquez, Las Meninas(left); Madrid.
of it. The image, in fact,seems to draw near the woman,whileshe in turnseems interposedas ifin modesty. These to reclineawayfromit,her discarded garments inside out. The cupid can even come to seem subtle calibrationsturn narcissism the attendantof the image ratherthan the woman-adjusting the mirrorso that the presence withinit can gaze on the body stretchedout before it. In doing so he would do for the mirrorimage what Velazquez does for us by paintinghis our viewingsurrogateswithin the painting.Notice thatthe cupid and the mirror, painting,comprise another double(d) gaze: male and female, young and old, of the originalnurturing infantand maternal-the pre-oedipal pair,inhabitants femalebody.Their environment, gazing out togetheron the singleself-sufficient two looks can be read as tender,bemused, wistful, pleased, even nostalgic-but not as sadisticand/oraggressively certainly possessive. It is almost as if the woman herself,in all her preciselydelineated reality, exists only to mediate between us and thatvague evocation in the mirror:as if her were a matterof creatinga stablespace across whichtwovague representing thresholdcreatures-ourselves, suspended before the painting,and the image,
Art Engendering
37
floating behind the mirror-might come face to face across some benign fantasy of embodiment.At the same timethe mirrorimage mediatesbetweenourselves and the recliningwoman-not simplybecause it relaysher gaze to us, but also to the eitherher or us. And finally, because it "reads" as an othernessreflecting degree that we stillconceive the gaze thatoriginates"here" where we are to be the mirroris opposite us in thisrespecttoo: female and male and phallocentric, beyondthe face'sframe, lookingout but seeing in, scarcelystretching matrixlike, diffusenot focused, its element vagueness and shadow, much less the mirror's, takeplace and complexity light.And noticethatall thisfracturing not penetrating desire by aligning it with withinthe convention thatjustifiesmale voyeuristic as in countlessRenaissance versions self-involvement-often, female narcissistic Elders(fig.8), fixing theviewereitherin the place of or opposite of Susannaand the the prurientfathers.Thus once again we finda subversiveopening up or operglance a conventionalscheme. atingwithinwhat seems at first Similar splittings open up withinthe woman's own lineaments.Everything hinges on the non-agreementbetween the naked body and the mirror'sfacethe one all line, contour,profile,facingelsewhere,the other all blurred visage, of thisgenre-Rubens's is an especially turnedour way.The conventionalmirror nervous example-presents the female body as a unityto be enveloped, visually possessed in all its aspects and fromeveryside. (I followhere Leo Steinberg's elides,misconVelazquez's, on the otherhand, fissures, reading of the tradition.)6 structs. It does thiswithinthe spectator'srelationto the image, but also "within" We have already seen how the image in the mirror the woman'sown being-there. in desire. It is also portrayed and taketheinitiative woman from the to detach tends and the mixas other.The loose hair,the fullcheeks,the remote,aging features, are scarcelywhat we are ture of candor, bemusement,and sheer unreadability led to expect bythe sharplydefinedcheekbone and the slenderneck of the actual woman. As she-the image, thatis-gazes out (and in) at the woman, she seems contained otherness-an intimationof a kind of unseen, watchful,intimately mortality, perhaps, but even more so an incorporatedmaternalanima, presentin but not to the self-or perhaps vice versa. and indirection The imperfectfitthus opens up the realm of introspection We might"read" the mirror and metaphoricity. image,forinstance,as an exterior at all but a represenof an interiorgaze-not a directreflection representation tation of Venus as she thinksof herself looking at herself,her "interior"infor specspectingan "exterior"mediation of an imagined self.The possibilities ulation are almost endless. More importantis the subtle torque created by the of gazes-it is in a sense the source of the painting'swhole slightmisalignment be perceived thewomanwould, I think, innerdynamic.Were itnot forthemirror to its right,down into the funnel-like as gazing not in its directionbut slightly at the end of her gaze, itself darknessbelow the drapes. The mirror, interposing itbe lost,mustas itwere forcibly pull itout grantingit an image insteadof letting 38
REPRESENTATIONS
and awayfromthiswedge of darkness,back towardthelucid center.And it needs our triangulatingpresence, over here with our unshakable ontological investment in the fiction that mirrorsdirectly reflect faces,as a kind of Archimedean point of leverage to accomplish thispurpose. In recompense our own head-on, look is taken up into the painting'slateral weave isolated, potentially voyeuristic of gazes, and allowed to participatein the mood of desire, solicitude,and jouissance that it constructs.So again the scopophilic scene and the subject-object level under whicha more complex and asympolarityare only a screen or first metriccenteringprocess takes place.7 And a gendering process as well. For what it seems to me the paintinggives us-and I am indebtedto SteveLarocco and MaryJacobusforthisformulationis woman's eroticallure, and the pleasure it affords men-though women too, if differently-beingsupplemented by and even modulatinginto the inner pleasurable constitution of the selfas subject,in and of representation.8 And thistotal or of sameness and otherness that both sexes fill process amalgam-a complex out in different our own pleasure (and not so different) ways-is whatconstitutes in the image. What may make it possible to say "we" here is the elementof otherness thatour separate (and separatelygendered) selvescommonlyinclude. In some intrapsychic as well as intersubjective sense there may be alwaystwo who look. The Rokeby Venusand Las Meninas,at least, seem to entertainsome such
FIGURE
Susanna and the Elders. Tintoretto, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Art Engendering 39
notion. I know that as a solitarymale viewer-and as someone writingtoward couple. some other-I feel haunted bythe image of thatghostly I think, Venus, Rokeby The gaze? the of maleness so-called the And whatabout encourages us to regard the whole doctrinewithsuspicion.The fieldof vision it not phalliccapture. And itsspace is opens on is one of pre-oedipal contentment, less patriarchal than "maternal"-in the sense thatJulia Kristeva,not Freud, would understand that term: a place neitherof possession and display nor of separation,spacing, and the weaving and traplenitude but of splitting, mythic versingof gazes. (Were theretime,thiswould be the place to considerVelazquez's withitselusivedepictionof the space in whichimagesare produced.) TheSpinners, towarditsplace, and what As for"thegaze" itself:twiceVelazquez pointsa mirror but alterity, nonpresence, and/or look male he discovers there is not a unified waysseem a projection thatin theirdifferent figments side-by-sideness-ghostly demand thatimages obey. of the desire in images, not a transcendental The question remains as to what extentwe can generalize fromthe Rokeby Venus.I am tempted to claim thatwhat the paintingsuggestsabout the viewing situationand the engenderingof the visual holds trueforimages in general,and to counteractit. of a Picasso or a Rubens are strenuousattempts thatthe virilities It would follow that to critique "the male gaze" in termsof its hegemony and controllingpower would be to grant it exactlythe realitythatit lacks, and thus yetagain become complicitin the order of thingsone wantsto undermine. But another part of me wantssimplyto treatthe paintingas an exception-obviously a loved one-and tryto nurture a way of seeing that feels to me increasingly endangered. No doubt this is merelyto express a preferencefor images that, and reabsorb it. But I desire, transfigure beyond ironizingand deconstructing thistoo is something level archaic ineradicable at some would like to thinkthat thatwe share. Notes
1. Gaylyn Studlar, "Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema," in Bill Nichols, ed., Movies and Methods,vol. 2 (Berkeley, 1985), 611-12. Feminist theory's account of the male gaze and of female spectatorship is, it should be noted, anything but monolithic; for an intelligent discussion of its various positions and internal disagreements see Film Theory(New Tania Modleski, The WomenWho Knew Too Much: Hitchcockand Feminist 1-15. York, 1988), 2. For a trenchant account of this paradox see Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections fromDamaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London, 1974), 43-45. Culture (Oxford, Fantasies ofFeminineEvil in Fin-de-SiWcle 3. Bram Dijkstra, Idols ofPerversity: 1986); Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 1, Women,Floods, Bodies, History,trans. Stephen Conway (Minneapolis,1987). 4. I am indebted to my colleague Katherine Brown for this perception. 5. Recent studies of the geometry of Las Meninas have established that the images in its mirror are reflections of what is painted on its depicted canvas, not of what stands
40
REPRESENTATIONS
directly opposite that mirror in a central -viewing place. For the literature see Jose Guidol, Veldzquez, trans. Kenneth Lyons (New York, 1974), 289; Joel Snyder and Ted Cohen, "Reflexions on Las Meninas: Paradox Lost," Critical Inquiry 7 (1980): 129-47; Leo Steinberg, "Velizquez' Las Meninas," October 19 (1981): 45-54; Bo Vahlne, "Veliz51 tidskrift quez' Las Meninas: Remarks on the Staging of a Royal Portrait," Konsthistorisk (1982): 22-28; Svetlana Alpers, "Interpretation Without Representation; or, The Viewing of Las Meninas," Representations1 (1983): 31-42; Joel Snyder, "Las Meninas and the Mirror of the Prince," CriticalInquiry 11 (1985): 539-71. For further comment see note 8 below. Art (Oxford, 6. See Leo Steinberg, Other Criteria: Confrontationswith Twentieth-Century 1972): 180-81. 7. More could be made of this. If one posits an isolated, head-on, "Cartesian" gaze at the painting, certain fetishisticelements can come into play (as Susan Lurie has pointed out to me): the "decapitated" female head superimposed atop the prominent buttocks, its gaze directed at the occluded genital area, perhaps even angling down over the line of the buttocks (much as the cupid's angled look grazes the top edge of the mirror's frame) to engender a corresponding genital self-consciousness in the viewer. Here indeed might be the theme of the female body as source of castration anxiety and defense against it, its "parts" assembled according to the logic of a sadistic, genitally fixated male gaze. But the whole horizontal project of the painting, it seems to me, is to vacate this position: first,by deflecting the axis of vision to either side of it (angling toward the mirror's gaze from the woman's line of sight on the right, pulling her gaze toward it from our place on the left); and second, by sweeping our gaze along the lines of the woman's span, transporting us into an experience (aesthetically even more irresistible) of the whole unbroken body. The powerful curve of back and spine, arching upward from the buttocks toward the hand-held head and its casual female gaze, could be taken as the "figure" of this translation from one mode (and place) of viewing to another. With regard to the idea of "vacating" a central viewing position by angling the line of sight to either side of it: something similar is constructed in Las Meninas, where an image which appears to reflect the viewer head on is actually relayed from a depicted canvas left of center to a viewing position correspondingly on the right. The sensation of a head-on gaze that occupies a central viewing position and finds its answering look in a mirror placed directly opposite it proves here to be a carefully contrived (and psychologically unshakable) illusion: that central viewing place is in fact not reflected in the mirror, and what (if anything) occupies it is not disclosed. The "absenting" of the viewer in this place serves a very different purpose in Las Meninas than it does in the Rokeby Venus, but the common structure suggests a thematic relationship between the two paintings that might be fruitfullypursued. 8. The firstpart of this formulation is indebted to an unpublished paper by Steve Larocco, whose powers of formulation have helped me to clarify issues throughout this essay; the last phrase is taken verbatim from a comment by Mary Jacobus on Julia Kristeva's characterization of maternal discourse: see Jacobus, Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism (New York, 1986), 147. For Kristeva see "Motherhood According to Giovanni Approach toLiteratureand Art, ed. Leon S. RouBellini," in Desire in Language: A Semiotic diez (New York, 1980), 237-70.
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Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems Author(s): Edward Snow Source: Representations, No. 25 (Winter, 1989), pp.

Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems

Musp Olympia. 4. Manet,

5. Velazquez, The Toilet (detail). ofVenus

detail (right). Prado, 6 and 7. Velazquez, Las Meninas(left); Madrid.

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