THE MOTHER-WHORE DICHOTOMY IN WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION

Abstract

This portfolio examines the problematic presence and impact of the Mother–Whore dichotomy in the understanding and the representation of women across literature, philosophy, and visual art. It illustrates the persistent dissonance between the nurturing and passive roles that have been traditionally expected of women and the ways their bodies have been imagined and represented—often sexualized, objectified, and dehumanized. Through the flirtatious, ornamental depictions of women in Rococo art, the emotional and existential fragmentation of the self in Simone de Beauvoir’s "The Woman Destroyed," and a critical reflection on contemporary feminist perspectives of visual representations of the female body, this portfolio exemplifies the double-standards that society puts on women and their bodies—which ultimately undermines the complexity of their lived experience and strips them of their subjectivity.