Princess Ida.

After viewing the Princess Ida video clips, I cannot decide whether to be offended or open-minded about its content. The subject of an all-women’s college is obviously a sensitive subject for me. I find it hilarious that the premise of the story is that Princess Ida, in her attempt to swear off men, founds an all-women’s college. I think that this premise probably captures the perception of Victorian England in regards to all-women’s education’s purpose. In actuality all-women’s education has little to do with the separation from men. Rather it presents a place in a society abundant with double standards in which women are free to study and think critically. It also in more recent years has become a haven for those women questioning their sexuality and/or gender. I don’t think that Gilbert and Sullivan were trying to purposely trivialize all-women’s education, but they do seem to capitalize upon a controversial social movement and the innate ignorance involved. In so doing they both create a strong female protagonist, but they also present a giggly and jumpy female chorus. Gilbert and Sullivan insinuates that the college women’s absence from men have made them nervous and frightful of men rather than strong and independent.

            “A lady fair, of lineage high,” presents woman as scientifically more developed than man, hence why the “Ape man,” even in disguise, cannot woo the enlightened lady. These Darwinian references were quite popular in the late 19^th century. I remember in my reading about Mahler that he wrestled with Darwinian theories in his 3^rd Symphony. However Gilbert and Sullivan set up a black-and-white situation in which the only reason a woman would study in lieu of romance is because men are not worth their time, scientifically speaking of course. This argument makes me uncomfortable because it reminds me of statements made through the 19^th and early 20^th centuries that African American brains were less biologically developed than Caucasian people’s brains. Why does superiority’s claim have to be grounded in a faulty biological basis? And why does it have to be about superiority at all?