Read More: The History of Franzia
Bible to Renaissance
It's a charge that seems nearly impossible, since study after study has shown that women report higher rates of anger and that we feel it more intensely, more persistently than men. And the reasons for that anger, modern science tells us, are hardly abstract: women feel most enraged by condescension, neglect, and rejection. One researcher found that overwhelmingly "women tend to be angered by the negative behaviors of men, whereas men tend to be angered by women's negative emotional reactions."Yet Proverbs neither warns men to alter their behavior, nor does it suggest that they might be the source of a woman's anger. It simply suggests that they seek masculine solitude. Perhaps that's why societies, seemingly regardless of time frame or location, treat women's anger with such disdain.Arguably the first woman to truly embrace anger was the appropriately named 16th-century writer Jane Anger. In 1589 pamphlet, Protection for Women, Jane rails against the ignorance of her male counterparts, their easy recourse to stereotypes of the gentler sex, their haughty belief that impression is synonymous with fact. Jane did not write her fervid pamphlet to ferret out and respond to the claims of men: she wrote Protection for Women to express the inexpressible. She wrote it to express her anger.It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman.
Jane herself acknowledges that rage was her muse and describes her text as one "that which my [bad-tempered vanity] hath rashly set downe…it was ANGER that did write it." And her prose is pointedly indignant by modern standards, a radical departure from the conciliatory tone that women were expected to adapt in the 16th century. Jane took neither shit nor prisoners in her proto-feminist manifesto, hitting men hard for lechery, excess, and their refusal to break with rhetorical traditions that painted women as witless sluts:Societies, seemingly regardless of time frame or location, treat women's anger with disdain.
Whether or not Jane Anger was a nom de plume or a conveniently perfect name is something that scholars of early English literature still debate. Some (men) wonder whether or not Jane was a woman at all, or if she was a man claiming a woman's voice; a "ventriloquizing woman" it's called. But it seems unlikely that Jane was a man—no man could muster up such passion and let a woman take credit.Jane would prove to be an influential figure. Her pamphlet one of the earliest articulations of frustrations felt over the dominant perception of women, particularly since such perceptions increasingly determined women's roles in heterosexual relationships."Fie on the falsehood of men, whose minds go oft a–madding and whose tongues cannot so soon be wagging but straight they fall a-railing. Was there ever any so abused, so slandered, so railed upon, or so wickedly handled undeservedly, as are we women?"
Think of Congreve's famous line from The Mourning Bride (1679): "Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd/ Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd." It's a phrase so deeply lodged in our cultural consciousness that its manifestation seems almost natural; like when Glenn Close boils a sweet bunny in Fatal Attraction, or in movies marketed as a salve for the girl power set—like John Tucker Must Die and The Other Woman—where women form bonds for the sole reason of that assuaging scorn.Hell hath no fury, like a woman scorn'd.
Wollstonecraft To Woolf
Second-Wave Feminism
And that anger was palpable, born out in manifestos like Valerie Solanas' SCUM (1968) and artist Martha Rosler's knife-wielding video installation Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975). For six minutes, Rosler recites the alphabet, holding up a kitchen implement that corresponds to that letter: "A, apron," Rosler says while staring into the camera. As she recites, labeling the objects of her oppression, she grows increasingly unhinged. She stabs with knives, slams down heavy equipment, and by the letters "W, X, Y, Z," she's quit the attempt to name kitchen objects at all. Instead she contorts her body to resemble the letters, wielding a knife in her right hand and a fork in the other. At "Z," she puts down the fork and, like Zorro, slashes a Z through the air. In the hands of Rosler, the celebratory action of a fictional hero turns into a menacing expression of powerlessness. Solanas, more to the point, just called men a "shitpile."I have nurtured and protected my feminist anger like a cherished daughter.
hooks, Lorde, and Call-Out Culture
For black women like hooks and Lorde, owning their anger was a particularly radical act. The stereotype of the "Angry Black Woman" stems from 19th-century minstrel shows, a genre of entertainment devoted to the degradation of blacks in post-slavery America. Yet this radical declaration was lost on white feminists who saw mere expression as a neutral act free from racial politics.Black women are expected to use our anger only in the service of other people's salvation.
Girl Squads and Collective Culture
With the increasing popularity of feminism, the movement has taken a turn for the positive: Mean is banished, and everyone is supposed to lift each other up as a political act. But when compulsory positivity is the norm, criticizing another women is seen as a distraction at best, and a threat to feminist progress at worst. Think of Taylor Swift, patron saint of the girl squad, who has publicly championed feminism, and yet infamously bristled at criticism from a rightfully angry woman. In the Swiftian worldview, celebration is the modus operandi. In a world where women are either team players or petty, women's anger is often reduced to the squabbling of "mean girls."Yet, women's anger—in its pure and powerful expression and the history from which it draws—is a rebellious act. Angry women still haunt: Elena Ferrante's women are furious, Pussy Riot and the Guerilla Girls still revel in rage, and movements like the SlutWalk still believe in the destabilizing force of anger. The history of angry women, it seems, has not yet found its conclusion.When compulsory positivity is the norm, criticizing another women is seen as a threat to feminist progress.