Licit Pornography
The fact that the ballerina was conceived of as an erotic figure in the
nineteenth century is evident in the numerous prints that circulated depicted
these women, in
costume and character,
adding to the circulation of what Abigail
Solomon-Godeau (1986) has termed “licit pornography” (p.
94-95). This allowed for the consumption of these women in the privacy
of the bourgeois home
and
gives
us a clue
as to how these women were constructed for the gaze of the middle-class
male. Critical reviews
also allowed for the consumption of these women, substituting textual
for visual representation. Having examined how the
pointe shoe enhanced the idealization and eroticization of the female form,
I will now turn to the prints and reviews to explore further the contradictions that surrounded the feminine spectacle of the ballerina.