Women in Dark Times by Jacqueline Rose
| Women in Dark Times by Jacqueline Rose | |
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| Category: Biography | |
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Reviewer: Heather Magee
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| Summary: From the shadows of history to the frontlines of resistance, Women in Dark Times is a powerful reminder that the fight for freedom begins in the depths of the soul. | |
| Buy? yes | Borrow? yes |
| Pages: 416 | Date: February 2025 |
| Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1804271711 | |
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The world of the unconscious is not the antagonist of political life, but its steadfast companion, the hidden place or backdrop where any true revolution must begin…
Women in Dark Times is Jacqueline Rose's homage to courageous women throughout history, particularly women of the 21st, 20th and 19th centuries. Her historical and political backdrop is, thus, expansive, yet she navigates it with intelligence and an acknowledgment that feminism's lengthy mission is a testament to its successes, and not its failures: the ongoing force of feminism.
The book is structured as triptychs of women, each one from a different era which oppressed her in particular ways, each woman finding methods through which to live and resist against these. We begin with the socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg during the First World War, then Rose spotlights Charlotte Salomon who was murdered in Auschwitz, followed by Marylin Monroe and her fame in the 1950s and 60s. This section of the book is chronologically linear, and Rose through her writing seems genuinely in awe of the strength of these women.
Out of the three, the chapter on Monroe was the most illuminating and fascinating for me. Initially her comparison to the two women that structurally preceded her in this book seemed tenuous, but Monroe was revolutionary in her own right. Unfortunately, despite her extraordinary ability to think freely in a society hellbent on controlling its national image, her own image was used as a distraction from the unspoken legacy of war in American culture.
The second triptych revolves around women who were the victims of so-called honour killings in the 2000s and 2010s: Shafilea Ahmed, Heshu Yones and Fadime Sahindal. Rose deftly tackles the issue of how to deal with these kinds of murders as they have been categorised by some laws and many cultures, in ways that protect women without perpetuating islamophobic and anti-immigration agendas. It exposes the regrettable ability for feminism to be so easily weaponised by the dominant culture when it suits them, and then demonised when it does not.
The third and final triptych is a series of contemporary female artists who push the boundaries of thought and take as their artistic models voices and stories that slip through the cracks. The first two are Esther Shelav-Gerz the contemporary artist of democracy, finding meaning in silence and activating the past to new forms of witnessing and Yael Bartana whose trilogy of films ...And Europe Will be Stunned is above all, according to her, a critique of extreme nationalism and racism which plague our societies; it is about learning to live together. In the current political climate this chapter held particular significance. Finally, Therese Oulton paints a world going mute under assault. This chapter seemed to me especially poignant with the inescapable and pulling reminder of the current climate crisis lingering in my mind whilst being invited to decipher the paintings Outon creates of matter disintegrating before our eyes.
The frequent callbacks which Rose includes in each of these sections to women previously discussed in the book, though the comparisons drawn are sometimes pertinent, do little however to lend a sense of narrative flow to the text. I really wanted to feel utterly compelled by this current of strong women, but sadly the portraits of the women themselves and Rose's clear admiration for them alone failed to carry me upstream at times. Perhaps a clearer narrative thread would have aided its propulsion.
These are voices who speak both publicly and privately, from within darkness and find ways to make this darkness a part of their fight for freedom as 'custodians of the night. Rose's prose is beautiful and her authorial persona is extremely likeable (she often attaches a casual ...as one might say to the most eloquent and pithy remark you've ever heard). The creativity of women is foregrounded as a necessary force with which to fight the evils that so often accompany nationalistic and anti-democratic trends in history.
This is, I would venture, a crucial text for women and an inspirational one for the tragic inevitability and actuality of women once more finding themselves in dark times.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy of the book to the Bookbag. For more essayistic prose on feminism and art, pick up a copy of A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex and the Mind by Siri Hustvedt.
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