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Is the word "Muse" problematic?

Also the idea of Muse has been warped in today's world. In Greek myth they Judged the competition between Athena and Arachne. And a group of sisters? I think? Were turned into birds for having the impudence of challenging the Muses in a singing competition. They were the embodiment of the arts, not just the inspiration for them.
 
Oh why not...

Does the word objectify a woman (usually) physically or as an abstract idea- meaning as whatever it is the artist is inspired to create by his 'Muse'? Is the distinction important?
 
SimonDoom said:
I'm curious about this. How is Annie a muse? She's a fan of the author, but is she a muse? She doesn't inspire the author's work, except in the limited sense that, under duress, he keeps writing at her urging.
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It's been a while since I read it, but going by memory, I would say that Annie does inspire Paul, even if her methods leave something to be desired.

At the beginning of Misery, Paul doesn't respect his own work. He's killed off Misery because he wants to be done with that series and write something more respectable; he starts writing Misery's Return solely to stop the crazy woman from killing him.

But when he tries to retcon Misery's death with an "it was all a dream" device, Annie tells him that it's not good enough, and he recognises that she's right: it's lazy writing and he can do better. He goes back and finds a way to resurrect Misery that works both for him and the crazy woman threatening to kill him; by the end of his time with Annie, Misery's Return means enough to him that he makes a point of saving it and publishing it. Her obsession may be pathological but it also gets him to take his own work more seriously, even when there's no more Annie to appease.
 
Bramblethorn said:
Her obsession may be pathological but it also gets him to take his own work more seriously, even when there's no more Annie to appease.
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It’s been a while since I last saw that movie, but doesn’t he publish the book he’s written under duress largely to capitalize on the publicity which the whole incident brought him? Maybe that qualifies, in some way, as taking one’s work more seriously, but I’d rather say that ending a series where one feels it should be ended is more of a sign of respecting the work’s artistic value, and thus more laudable than continuing it for commercial reasons or to appease fans (be they crazy ax-murderers or otherwise).
 
I read this thread twice before noticing a distinct bifurcation of meaning. Some, and this is presumably the problematic sense, are using it for a here-and-now person. Now in the distant past I might have had such a person in mind once or twice for a story, but I'd call that person an inspiration or a model.

That's not what I mean by a muse. Then I was going to say I have no muse, but of course... Sappho, the tenth muse, if anyone. Good is attainable. Not that I write like her, or even try to, any more than I try to write like Jane Austen.

(Reg: 'Well obviously Jane Austen.' Cardinal Ximenez: 'Two muses. I have two muses. Sappho, Jane Austen, and Monty Py—ohh.')
 
SimonDoom said:
There's nothing inherently problematic about it. But of course, there can be problematic aspects of a relationship between an older man/artist and a younger woman/muse.

I would disagree with Zadie Smith that the feminization of the word "muse" necessarily makes it misogynistic. I think we have to allow for complexity in human relationships. People can look at one another in many different ways, and that's OK, and they can be inspired by others to create art in many ways, and that's OK. That's not to say that every artist-muse relationship is healthy. Obviously, that's not always the case.

Men like to look at women. Throughout human history, men have been inspired to create art by looking at women. This is not wrong. If that's the sum total of the way men deal with women, then yes, that's a problem. But it's not a problem if we accept this as one strand of how people deal with one another.
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Context may be relevant. Smith's essay is a review of a memoir by the painter Celia Paul, who in her youth was the muse/model/mistress for the much much older painter Lucien Freud, who apparently had a bad habit of impregnating his models, including Paul(of his 14 acknowledged children, 12 were with mistresses). Apparently he objected to Paul painting while they were together, and belittled her work. It was only after they split up that she became a successful artist in her own right.
 
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