What John Millais can teach us about Toxic Femininity

On a painting that illustrates man's struggle to define himself against and through women

Wars and women love the same qualities in men and both compete to claim the best of them. This has been a battle as old as men, women and wars have existed. Indeed, it is against wars and women that men may define themselves as Men. In our increasingly feminized world, a man who dares to embrace masculinity is vilified and excoriated.

“A woman simply is; a man must become” - Camille Paglia

A woman inherits femininity as a matter of natural course and must preserve it, whereas masculinity must be forged through the trials a man undergoes. Women unconsciously present the greatest challenge to men when they ask him to do something that would sacrifice his masculinity in order to appease her. A man is in no greater danger than when he is infatuated with a girl who does not know what she needs but only what she wants.

In this way, the girl becomes the dragon that the man must defeat in order to earn his place as a Man. When a man can overcome the strong feelings of infatuation with a girl and say “No,” he not only respects himself, but he earns the respect of the very woman he was trying to please. He has proven that his principles are a greater priority to him than the whims of a girl, and as such, he has frame she can depend on.

The nineteenth century painter, John Everett Millais, was born in 1829 and trained at the Royal Academy of Art in England. At age 19, he became one of three founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood alongside William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

In 1862, Millais painted “A Huguenot,” a work of art that reaches across time and culture to teach us immortal truths about how a woman must always fail, if a man is to become what she can respect. The painting depicts the events of St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, when protestants were murdered en masse.

Those who wore the white scarf during the massacre, identifying themselves as Roman Catholic, avoided being targeted. In Millais’ painting, the woman ties a white scarf around her Protestant lover’s arm to protect him. Her eyes plead with him to let her but he refuses, and with the same arm comforting his beloved, he pulls the white scarf away. With the other hand, he cups her face tenderly and looks down into her pleading eyes with love and firmness. He almost has a smile on his face, as if he is cheering her up and telling her that everything will be alright.

We do not know if the woman is a Catholic and if she has done the same on her left arm. She would prefer lying in order to protect her beloved, but he would rather die for his principles and his religion than cower under the scarf. The man chooses his principles over cowardice, despite the pleas of the woman. In fact, it is this quality about him that makes him admirable enough for her to love him so ardently in the first place.

The man’s body language too is firm against the round lines of the woman’s dress and posture. Her round head and rounded sleeves contrast the straight lines of his jacket and his leg. This is a visual metaphor for the firmness of his principles, and indeed of masculinity against the roundness and flexibility of femininity. The girl leans into her beloved, depending on him for principles and frame of being that she herself is attempting to sabotage with the white scarf. By standing straight and tall, the man resists her attempts to emasculate him. Men must struggle to define themselves against and through the feminine. 

It is only when he is tested by women and war that a boy can discover if he is a man. In this painting, Millais illustrates a man’s struggle against both. The man must choose between physical death through the religious war, or spiritual death by allowing himself to be emasculated by fear. The woman, of course, is unknowingly on the side of nature. She is testing him, without knowing that she is testing him, to see if he is truly a man.

This painting resonated strongly with the nineteenth century English public because middle class English men were increasingly becoming enmeshed in the feminine domestic sphere as “desk workers”. They longed for a romantic period when they could die for something honourable. They longed to pull away from feminine domesticity.

Men long for the same things today.

Women superficially love for men to become women because it is safer, easier and less complicated for them. They know what to expect from an emasculated man, and do not have to deal with that dangerous unknown realm of a man they both fear and love. They do not need to worry about having to surrender control. Women have the instinct to mother people they care about. A man who does not resist this instinct from a woman, can never earn her respect. Deep down a part of her she does not control, understands what she needs is not a son but a husband.

Despite the conflict between the masculine and feminine in this painting, Millais also paints a beautiful tenderness between the two lovers. Millais reminds us to love one another despite the fact that we do not often understand each other perfectly.