While penis envy and hysteria of the walking womb are laughable Freudian claims now, they were cutting edge during his time. Ironically, one of the more revolutionary aspects of his research was on just this; the idea of women’s sexuality. It’s important to note that while his theory here was radical for the time, he also considered women inferior, so we can’t have it all. However, Freud was one of the first people in psychology to acknowledge that women had sexual desire, and that repressing it in the way that many women were forced to do could lead to hysteria.

While the idea of the aforementioned wandering uterus is non-ironically hysterical, the point was still established: women cared about sex. They were not the passive, receptive, birthing vessels that they had been made out to be for so long.

Women during the time of both Freud and Whitman (and even now, in our modern era) were and are often expected to be pure. Pure as in no sex – which, as you will find after reading “The Body Electric,” is not an unexplored subject in Whitman’s writing. Throughout his poetry, Whitman works to represent (as he has so often stepped into the role of representative for other diverse experiences) women and the validity of their sexual desires. He makes sex something for all to see, as in “the privacy of night” within “Children of Adam,” writes of sex outside of marriage, and displays what was seen as private something public and proud.

Even through the shallow groundwork that Freud put forth and the deeper one that Whitman laid, there are still prevalent issues in our society today with invalidating women’s sexuality and sexual lives. Just one example is that women who have many sexual partners are seen as “slutty,” but men in that same situation are seen as “players.”

My question to you is: do you think that Whitman’s message worked? Do you think he did enough to represent women as a man, or did he cross a line by so boldly portraying the thoughts and feelings of women without being one himself (as Freud also did)? Are there inaccuracies in Whitman’s portrait of women, or was he a true representative?

This is my February 18th work.

Whitman & Wandering Wombs (Feb 18th Work)
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