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Homework Help: English: Books, Novels & Plays: Une Semaine de Bonte
by Christopher Davis
Victims of Large Cocks: Roosters as Symbols of French Oppression of Women in Max Ernst's Une Semaine De Bonte
In Max Ernst's "Une Semaine De Bonte" (translated "A Week of Kindness") various images of roosters appear in the chapter entitled Thursday. The element of Thursday, according to Ernst is blackness and he chooses two unlikely examples to depict Thursday's element; the first example being roosters and the second example being Easter Island (Ernst 148). The first section is where the roosters begin to turn up as both birds and strange man-beasts with and without wings. A pair of striking scenes appear one after the other in a short series of two plates featuring rooster-like-men breaking into what appear to be the bedrooms of helpless women. In the first scene a woman lies, dressed in pants and a shirt, tangled in her bed sheets face down on the floor in a pool of her own blood with an actual rooster crowing beside her on the floor and another one perched on her bed staring blankly at a rooster-like-man who holds his fists in the air almost triumphantly as a pair of unrecognizable faces peer in on the scene through a door left ajar (Ernst 153). In the very next plate a rooster-like-bear attempts to force entry into what looks like a sitting room with a fireplace, but cannot squeeze through because a woman wearing a simple black dress is blocking the door with a large armoire as another woman wearing a lighter more elaborate dress and standing close by the fireplace shies away from the struggle (Ernst 154). What are these oversize roosters doing to these women, and what is Ernst telling us through the depiction of their deadly struggle? I will argue that Ernst's images are his not so subtle commentary on the abuses and injustices of the Victorian woman in France, the women representing the various classes of French women and both the well dressed and bear-like roosters representing the brutal and oppressive French men, the on lookers through the doorway representing French society that saw and heard and could do nothing to help the oppressed.
The plates are simply composed and fairly straightforward to understand, much like the horrific situation facing any woman in post-Napoleonic France. In Figure 1 there is a graphic depiction of the plate's simple composition, separating the elements of the collages into victims (humans) and perpetrators (roosters). Both of the plates feature humans and roosters with more roosters appearing on the scene in the
plate of the murdered girl. The rooster that is on the floor with the dead body is crowing, but not to announce the coming of the dawn or the symbolic triumph of good over evil, light over darkness, instead it crows to announce the violent triumph of the fist waving man-like-rooster over the girl who lies dead on the floor. The rooster on the floor is also black, associating it with the symbolic rooster that acts as Satan's trumpeter. The rooster on the bed stares blankly at the man-like-rooster as though it were confused by the spectacle (Ernst 153). The girl who lies on the floor bleeding to death is also wearing pants, symbolic of her struggle against the oppression and total domination imposed upon her by the well dressed man-like-rooster standing at the door. During the Victorian period a woman wearing any type of manly garb was deemed sinful and a criminal offender so many women in the small fraction that stood up to unconditional, abusive, male domination would wear pants and the woman depicted in the plate on page 153 is wearing pants and has lost her fight paying for her refusal to bend to the rooster-like-man's will with her life, or if seen from a strictly symbolic angle losing her free will which would very well have been any chance at a life of her own. Figure 2 is a cleaner presentation of the information in figure 1, showing the link between the oppressed and the oppressor and details of their positions in each of the two scenes.
The example Ernst associates with these plates is "The Rooster's Laughter" and it is fitting because the symbol of France is the rooster because it is viewed as being courageous, vigilant, soldierly, repentant, and stately, yet the men of France hold none of the rooster's virtues when it comes to their treatment of their women. The rooster's laughter is the laughter of utter disgust at the misuse of its image. The man-like-rooster in the first plate is well dressed as opposed to the beast-like-rooster forcing its way into the fire lit room in the second plate (Ernst 154). This example of the French man more accurately reflects the way a woman would have seen him as the beast he was. During the Victorian period, many doctors advocated men fulfilling their every desire by using their wives and other women like tools, even suggesting beating them during sex since, according to their studies, they derived no pleasure from sex anyway. The well dressed woman in the plate shies away from the struggle between the dark garbed woman and the beast pressing in on them. Ernst suggests the dark garbed woman is her servant and as such is more willing to stand up to the oppression of the bestial rooster because she has less to lose. Reemployment is much easier to obtain than a remarriage and if the well dressed woman, who is probably the beasts wife, were to fend off his advances she would suffer divorce and the brand of being a woman who could not satisfy mans simplest of needs (Ernst 154).
This plate does not feature the onlookers of the plate before because the onlookers have lost interest in the everyday battle behind closed doors between men, ironically symbolized by roosters and their abused spouses (Ernst 154). Ernst is telling the reader, through the juxtaposition of the two plates, that the cruelty, objectifying of, and misogyny toward women in France is becoming worse and so common place that it does not turn the heads of those who see it happening. The onlookers accept what they see before them as the women of France falling before the will of their men just as they should. Ernst's plates support my argument, revealing the brutality exercised in the bedroom, the subjugation of Victorian women as a whole, the belligerence of the French men toward women, and most importantly the horrible societal misconception of men as soldierly, stately, watchful, proud individuals, worthy of their association with the national symbol of France, the rooster, when in fact they mistreat and abuse the very people they are thought to take care of.
References
Ernst, Max. Une Semaine De Bonte : A Surrealistic Novel in Collage. New York: Dover Publications, 1976.
Rooster. The Bestiary. Available: http://ww2.netnitco.net/users/legend01/rooster.htm. October 19, 2003
Collecting Ceramic Roosters. Beautiful Handmade Folk Art Ceramics. Available: http://www.clayangel.com/index.html October 19, 2003
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