The Inherent Insecurities at Work in "On the Power of Imagination" and "The Indiscreet Jewels"

            According to Alain Daniélou, author of The Phallus: Sacred Symbol of Male Creative Power, the penis is the embodiment of creative power as only it is capable of expelling semen, the seed of life. The very act, he claims, imitates the Supreme Beings’ creation of the universe. Being the link to their supposed power and authority, men value the member a great deal and expect that every aspect of said member conveys everything about each wielder. Contemporary culture reflects that through frequent jokes among the lines “the male individual is lacking when it comes to his member and hence compensates through material possessions.” Said compensation can vary from possessing objects of exaggerated size to hoarding of various objects. An example of this can be seen in the movie Shrek where the titular character wonders out loud, after seeing the antagonist’s colossal castle, “Do you think he’s maybe compensating for something?” Another example would be from the series, The Dresden Files. The character Harry Dresden, who is carrying around a single revolver, notices a suitcase filled with weapons specifically built for the upcoming mission. Dresden pauses, looks at the owner of the suitcase in the eyes and says, “My penis is bigger than yours”. This proliferation of penis-related humor indicates that men are obsessed with their penis for they believe it determines their very worth.

This axiom ties in with Montaigne who states that, if a man is condemned by other men because of the liveliness of the accused’s fickle member, the faultfinders are “by a conspiracy, malignantly charging him alone with their common fault”. In other words, the blamed becomes a scapegoat through which the accusers express their shared experience of failing concerning the control of the capricious member. Men see their member as being indicative of their value. This member, and its tendency to “obtruding so importunately when [men] have no use for it, and failing so importantly when we have the most use for it” thus creates insecurity within men. They see themselves as being unable to control their bodies, as being unable to properly access their contain power. That explains the blaming, the singling out of the lone individual, which is similar to how Col. Frank Fitts from the film American Beauty acts like a homophobe even though he is attracted to men. Both Col. Frank Fitts and the imagined men discussed above channel their fears through insulting an individual who bears the same issue. Through this means they intend to create distance from, to absolve themselves of the flaw in question.

So while Montaigne argues that the fickleness of the male member is to be expected and forgivable, he makes no mention of the expectations thrust upon women besides that “women are wrong to greet us with those threatening, quarrelsome, and coy countenances, which put out our fires even as they light them”. Basically, Montaigne asserts that women should not put up a front of being sexually reserved when being intimate with men. Perhaps this is due to men interpreting this modesty to be a reluctance to engage with sexual activity, which implies that the women do not value such interactions highly, which harms men’s ego and puts out men’s fires, so to speak. Nevertheless, this message holds the connotation that women serve, are subservient to men. This patriarchal system is confirmed in Diderot’s The Indiscreet Jewels. When the Sultan uses his magical ring to force several women’s genitals to speak, the “jewels” reveal extramarital sexual conduct, which cause husbands to either be lampooned or to become enraged. The former is due to how the adulterous activities from the guilty wife suggest that the husband is incapable as a man to pleasure her. Being unable to do so, his peers label him as being inferior and thus fit to be ridiculed. For the latter, the furious husband acts in such a manner because, in a similar vein, the adulterous acts imply that she is not pleased with her husband as a man, causing the husband to become enraged to protect his ego, because she has the audacity to overrule/ignore the absoluteness of the husband’s rule, or both. There is also a situation of double standards concerning the wife bypassing the demands of the husband, as the Sultan who initiates the situation in the first place has a favorite mistress. Due to how the Sultan holds a mistress while the wives are expected to be monogamous, the sultan’s court in the Congo is an example of a patriarchal society where man’s needs triumph over woman’s needs. What else is new?