Ways Of Seeing

This chapter begins with a reproduction of Felix Trutat’s (1824-1848) “Reclining Bacchante.” In it, a naked woman, her body well-lit, reclines. Her vagina is covered by a draped piece of cloth, and her face is turned to meet the spectator’s gaze. In the upper right-hand corner, a man sticks his face, which is veiled in shadow, through a window to gaze upon her.

Berger asserts that, according to long-held conventions that are only now being questioned, although still not surpassed, “the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man” (45). A man’s presence depends upon the promise of power that he embodies. If a man is perceived to possess a great amount of credible power, his presence is striking. If a man is perceived to lack credibility and power, he is said to have a weak presence. Berger continues: “The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual—but its object is always exterior to the man. A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you” (45). He concedes that the presence a man exerts may be fabricated: he may feign competences that he does not actually possess.