Archief nummers

A resilient nation. C.M.J. Muller Massis, the body and sports at the end of the
nineteenth century.At the end of the nineteenth century, physical exercise was regarded as a major instrument to regenerate the Dutch nation. C.M.J. Muller Massis, a journalist and central figure in the Dutch cycling world, was one of the main propagators of this idea. According to Massis, sports had to muscle and harden the bodies of the Dutch – masculine – youth, build their character and turn them into resilient and self-reliant young men. These able-bodied young men became the focal point for ideas about military defensibility, strengthening of the colonial empire, promoting industry and trade and battling the ‘struggle for life’.

Off the record. An early female nude by a French sculptor in a Dutch exhibition: Marie-Louise Lefèvre-Deumier’s Diana in The Hague in 1866.This article deals with the case of an early female (semi)nude by a French sculptress, shown exceptionally early at a Dutch exhibition: the Living Masters in The Hague in 1866, even if it was not mentioned in the catalogue. The artist, Marie-Louise Lefèvre-Deumier, then temporarily lived in The Hague but was from Paris, where it was then more customary to exhibit nudes, except for women. The discussed case concerns such an exception, particularly for the Netherlands, where it was not yet evident in 1866 to exhibit nudity, let alone by a woman. Yet it seems that little or no fuss was made when Lefèvre-Deumier showed her Diana in The Hague. In this text, explanations are sought for both its early presentation, and the lack of controversy it aroused. That fact that it only concerned a small statuette, that conformed to the classical sculpture tradition, that it was not mentioned in the catalogue, and that the sculptress had a respectable reputation, might all have played a role. Moreover, judging from two (other) known semi-nude marble statues from the same sculptor (Glycera and Morning Star), it is argued that the statuette shown in The Hague, representing the chaste Diana, must have held an acceptable balance between prudery and sensuality. This in contrast to Edouards Manet’s contemporary (Olympia), thus showing the double moral as concerned to sexuality in the arts of the 1860’s, in Paris as well as the Netherlands.

‘Dad is unwell again’. Illness experiences in nineteenth century self-narratives.It takes two to make a medical encounter – the sick person as well as the doctor, as historian Roy Porter rightly stated. This contribution investigates the perspective of the sick person. It shows how people in the Netherlands coped with illness in the nineteenth century. Their experiences can be traced in ‘egodocuments’, autobiographical texts such as diaries and illness narratives. These sources have hitherto barely been used to study the Dutch medical history ‘from below’. This exploratory article shows that the range of diseases is much broader than the traditional sources ‘from above’ suggest. Above that, the egodocuments reveal a negotiation of several discourses, such as religion and medicine. Furthermore it appears that an important role of the doctor in the medical encounter was to lend mental support. Finally the question is answered why people wrote about their illness experiences. Recent research on self-narratives from the nineteenth century has paid increasing attention to their function with regard to controlling time. However, selfnarratives on illness show a different view, because they often contain emotions, reflection and introspection.

Dutch literary representation of Oriental homosexuality in relation to the
Western scientific discourse.This article deals with representation of masculine homosexuality in relation to the Orient, in Dutch literary texts from around 1900. It focuses on two pivotal questions. First, how does this representation relate to the scientific (medical and ethnological) discourse from around 1900? Second, how does this representation relate to the concept ‘orientalism’ of Edward Said? The representation of homosexuality clearly shows a change in vision on homosexuality. The interest in the homosexual act as such shifted towards the focus on a concept of homosexual identity. Parallel to this development homosexuality is not exclusively regarded anymore as a feature that belongs to the ‘otherness’ of the Orient. Around 1900 it is looked upon as a human phenomenon that all races and all nations in principle have in common. Before ca. 1885 representation of homosexuality in relation to the Orient fits in completely with the orientalism concept of Said; towards the end of the nineteenth it does to a far lesser extent.

Menstruation in court. The female body, arson and forensic medicine in the nineteenth century.In the nineteenth century, doctors examined young girls accused of arson, identifying a relationship between a blocked menstruation and pyromania or insanity. This expert opinion could be used to exonerate the accused and to declare them unaccountable so as to avoid the death penalty. This article analyses the way the relationship between menstruation and pyromania was researched and concludes menstruation functioned as ‘empty signifier’, a catch-all term. A focus on forensic practices shows the difficulty of defining menstruation, pyromania and the correspondence between these two concepts.

From panorama to prevention. Popular anatomical museums in the Low Countries (1850-1880).Recent research on nineteenth-century popular anatomical museums has focused on their preventive and moralizing ideals. In the Low Countries, however, the anatomical museum had a different meaning in the 1850s. Dr. Joseph Kahn and his contemporaries portrayed their collections as a panoramic view of creation. The display of – zoological, ethnological and pathological – bodily differences represented the wealth of nature. In this article, we argue that the pathological body only became the core of the anatomical museum in the 1860s. The admission of the lower classes and the emergence of the hygiene movement led to a growing interest in the preventive and moralizing potential of the pathological body.

The enslaved body. [Paradox of the Surinam system of apartheid in the nineteenth century].This contribution is about slavery in the Dutch colony of Suriname (Dutch Guyana) and focuses on the body as the ultimate example of the paradoxes of slavery as a system of apartheid. On the one hand the enslaved were by law considered to be no more than movable property, like horses or cattle. On the other hand the enslaved were supposed to perform like only human beings could. This is illustrated by a number of bodily dimensions. Black nakedness was a much observed, and sometimes cherished phenomenon, as opposed to completely covered white bodies, or like the normality of naked animals. Particularly the black female body was continually subject to white male lust, even though formally it was forbidden and enslaved were considered to be more animal like than human. The paradox of ethnic mixing was that its outcome, the coloured body, was favoured by white, because of esthetical reasons, by black for reasons of social climbing, and at the same time both looked down upon the coloured population intensely. Furthermore, examples are given of the tortured as well as the resistant enslaved body. Eventually, when slavery was abolished in 1863, the enslaved black body turned out to have internalised a number of white elements as well as the other way around. The biggest paradox of all was that despite having made the enslaved body as the ultimate other, the white body could not do without it.