The Miniaturists

233 Pages·2022·6.118 MB·English

by  Barbara Browning

the miniaturists
The
Miniaturists
Bar bar a Browning
The
Miniaturists
the miniaturists
Barbara Browning
Bar bar a Browning
Duke University Press · Durham and London · 2022
© 2022 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞
Designed by Matthew Tauch
Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro by Copperline Book Services
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Browning, Barbara, [date] author.
Title: The miniaturists / Barbara Browning.
Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: lccn 2022005852 (print)
lccn 2022005853 (ebook)
isbn 9781478016274 (hardcover)
isbn 9781478018919 (paperback)
isbn 9781478023548 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Miniature objects in literature. | Literature—
History and criticism. | bisac: biography & autobiography /
Historical | social science / Gender Studies
Classification: lccPN56.m5368 b769 2022 (print) |
lccpn56.m5368 (ebook) | ddc 814/.54—dc23/eng/20220611
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005852
lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005853
Cover art: Frances Glessner Lee, Nutshell Studies of
Unexplained Death, Kitchen (detail), c. 1944–46. Collection
of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
Photo by Lorie Shaull.
for Leo
C O NT E NTS
contents
Foibles of Insects and Men
1
The Mother of Forensic Science
39
Dilation and Contraction
57
Suite for Toy Piano
81
Gulliver Phantasies
107
Foibles of Ins
C O NT E NTS
The Handwriting on the Wall
135
Lead Paint and Other Poisons
159
That Which Is More
Proportionable to the Smallness
of My Abilities
185
Works Cited or
Obliquely Referenced
211
ects and Men

foibles of insects and men
I
t all began as a question of feminist methodology.
A friend of mine had written a book about archiving.
In it, she mentioned a fellow student in graduate school
who had told her about “vaginal libraries”—this, in ref-
erence to Argentine women imprisoned during the dictator-
ship, who hid dissident texts in their private parts. My friend
had extended this figure to consider various ways in which
women store certain information in their bodies. I was try-
ing to come up with a word for this messy, interesting pro-
cess, which I wanted to term gynarchivism. So first I Googled
gynarchy, which literally means government by women but is
most frequently used to refer to insect societies dominated by
females.
I was quickly directed to a seemingly obscure text by Wil-
liam Morton Wheeler titled Social Life among the Insects
(1923). The brief passage that popped up was weirdly captivat-
ing. In it, Wheeler notes that certain species have succeeded in
“reducing the male to a mere episode in the life of the female.”