【１】大人になって毎日同じようなことを繰り返していると、あまり「ふしぎ」なことはなくなってくる。何もかもわかったような気になると、今度は面白くなくなってきて、「ふしぎ」なことを提供してくれるテレビ番組や催しものなどを見る。【２】これらは必ず「ふしぎ」なことが最後には心に収まるようになっているので、少しの間心をときめかして、後は安心、ということになる。
　【３】子どもは「ふしぎ」と思う事に対して、大人から教えてもらうことによって知識を吸収していくが、時に自分なりに「ふしぎ」な事に対して自分なりの説明を考えつくときもある。【４】子どもが「なぜ」ときいたとき、すぐに答えず、「なぜでしょうね」と問い返すと、面白い答えが子どもの側から出てくることもある。
　「お母さん、せみは、なぜミンミン鳴いてばかりいるの」と子どもがたずねる。【５】「なぜ、鳴いているんでしょうね」と母親が応じると、「お母さん、お母さんと言って、せみが呼んでいるんだね」と子どもが答える。そして、自分の答えに満足して再度質問しない。これは、子どもが自分で「説明」を考えたのだろうか。
　【６】それは単なる外的な「説明」だけではなく、何かあると「お母さん」と呼びたくなる自分の気持ちもそこに込められているのではなかろうか。だからこそ、子どもは自分の答えに「納得」したのではなかろうか。【７】そのときに、母親が「なぜって、せみはミンミンと鳴くものですよ」とか、「せみは鳴くのが仕事なのよ」とか、答えたとしても「納得」はしなかったであろう。たとい、せみの鳴き声はどうして出てくるかについて「正しい」知識を供給しても、同じことだったろう。【８】そのときに、その子にとって納得のいく答えというものがある。
　「そのときに、その人にとって納得がいく」答えは、「物語」になるのではなかろうか。せみの声を聞いて、「せみがお母さん、お母さんと呼んでいる」というのは、すでに物語になっている。【９】外的な現象と、子どもの心のなかに生じることがひとつになって、物語に結晶している。
　人類は言語を用いはじめた最初から物語ることをはじめたのではないだろうか。短い言語でも、それは人間の体験した「ふしぎ」、「おどろき」などを心に収めるために用いられたであろう。
　【０】古代ギリシャの時代に、人々は太陽が熱をもった球体であることを知っていた。しかしそれと同時に、彼らは太陽を四頭立ての金の馬車に乗った英雄として、それを語った。これはどうしてだろう。夜の闇を破って出現して来る太陽の姿を見たときの彼らの体∵験、その存在のなかに生じる感動、それらを表現するのには、太陽を黄金の馬車に乗った英雄として物語ることが、はるかにふさわしかったからである。
　かくて、各部族や民族は、「いかにしてわれわれはここに存在するのか」という、人間にとって根本的な「ふしぎ」に答えるものとしての物語、すなわち神話をもつようになった。それは単に「ふしぎ」を説明するなどというものではなく、存在全体にかかわるものとして、その存在を深め、豊かにする役割をもつものであった。
ところが、そのような「神話」を現象の「説明」として見るとどうなるだろう。確かに英雄が夜毎に怪物と戦い、それに勝利して朝になると立ち現われてくるという話は、ある程度、太陽についての「ふしぎ」を納得させてくれるが、そのすべての現象について説明するのには都合が悪いことも明らかになってきた。たとえば、せみの鳴くのを「お母さんと呼んでいる」として、しばらく納得できるにしても、しだいにそれでは都合の悪いことがでてくる。
　そこで、現象を「説明」するための話は、なるべく人間の内的世界をかかわらせない方が、正確になることに人間がだんだん気がつきはじめた。そして、その傾向の最たるものとして、「自然科学」が生まれてくる。「ふしぎ」な現象を説明するとき、その現象を人間から切り離したものとして観察し、そこに話をつくる。
　このような「自然科学」の方法は、ニュートンが試みたように、「ふしぎ」の説明として普遍的な話（つまり、物理学の法則）を生み出してくる。これがどれほど強力であるかは、周知のとおり現代のテクノロジーの発展がそれを示している。これがあまりに素晴らしいので、近代人は「神話」を嫌い、自然科学によって世界を見ることに心をつくしすぎた。これは外的現象の理解に大いに役立つ。しかし、神話をまったく放棄すると、自分の心のなかのことや、自分と世界とのかかわりが無視されたことになる。

　（河合隼雄「物語とふしぎ」による）

Men dream of women. Women dream of the1mselves being dreamt of. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. Women constantly meet glances which act like mirrors, reminding them of how they look, or how they should look. Behind every glance is a judgment. Sometimes the glance they meet is their own, reflected back from a real mirror. A woman is always accompanied--except when quite alone and, perhaps, even then by her own image of herself. While she is walking across a room or weeping at the death of her father she cannot avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she is taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and particularly how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.
A woman in the culture of privileged Europeans is first and foremost a sight to be looked at. What kind of sight is revealed in the average European oil-painting? There were as many portraits of women as there were portraits of men. But in one category of painting, women were the principal, ever-recurring subject. This category is the nude. In the nudes of European painting we can discover some of the criteria and conventions by which women were and are traditionally judged and seen.
What is a nude? In his book on the nude, Kenneth Clark says that being naked is simply being without clothes, whereas the nude, according to him, is a form of art. I would put it differently. To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself. In the traditions of the European oil-painting, nakedness is not taken for granted as in archaic art. Nakedness is a sight for those who are dressed.
We can begin with the story of Adam and Eve, as told in Genesis'

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good to eat, and that it was pleasing to the eye and tempting to contemplate, she took some and ate it. She also gave her husband some and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they discovered that they were naked.... But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, 'Where are you?' He replied, 'I heard the sound as you were walking in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.'...To the woman He said: 'I will increase your labour and your groaning, and in labour you shall bear children. You shall be eager for your husband, and he shall be your master.'

Two things are striking about this story. The couple become aware of being naked because, as a result of eating the apple, each sees the other differently. Nakedness in this story is created in the mind of the beholder. The second striking fact is that the woman is blamed and is punished by being made subservient* to the man. In relation to the woman, the man becomes the agent of God.
In medieval art the story is often illustrated, scene following scene, as in a strip-cartoon. During the Renaissance the narrative sequence disappears, and the single moment usually chosen to be depicted is the moment of shame. The couple wear fig-leaves or make a modest gesture with their hands. But now their shame is not so much in relation to one another as to the clothed spectator. It is the spectator's looking which shames them. Their drama is that they have been seen by us.
Later, as painting became more secular, many other subjects offered the opportunity of painting nudes. But always in the European tradition the nude implies an awareness of being seen by the spectator. The bodies are not naked as they are: they are naked as seen by us.
Certainly I would not deny the crucial part that seeing plays in sexuality. But there is a great difference between being seen as oneself naked (or seeing another in that way) and a body being put on display. To be naked is to be without disguise. To be on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise, a disguise which cannot be discarded. Among the tens of thousands of European nudes there are perhaps twenty or thirty exceptions, where the painter, in love with the woman, has painted her revealed as herself.
But until Impressionism there were very few. Most of the nudes have been lined up by their painters for the pleasure of the male spectator-owner who will assess them as comparative sights. Their nudity is another form of dress. They are condemned to never being naked. With their clothes off, they are as formal as with their clothes on. Those women who are not judged beautiful--are not beautiful. Those who are--are awarded the prize. The prize is to be owned.
In the European oil-painting the second person, or the second person who matters, is the stranger looking at the picture. The woman must address herself to this stranger.
Sometimes a painting includes a male lover. But the woman's attention is rarely directed towards him. She looks away from him, or she looks out of the picture towards the man who considers himself her true lover--the spectator-owner.
Take the famous Bronzino Allegory of Time and Love in the National Gallery. A boy kneels on a cushion to kiss a woman. She is Venus. But the way her body is arranged has nothing to do with that kissing. Her body is arranged in the way it is to display it to the spectator looking at the picture. The picture is made to appeal to his sexuality. It has nothing to do with her sexuality. The convention of not painting the hair on a woman's body helped towards the same end. Hair is associated with sexual power, with passion. The woman's sexual passion needed to be minimised so that the clothed spectator might feel he had the monopoly of such passion. Women were there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own.
The nude in European oil-painting is usually presented as an ideal subject. It is said to be an expression of the European humanist spirit. I do not want to reject this claim totally, but I have tried to question it by starting off from a different viewpoint. Durer, who believed in the ideal nude, thought that this ideal could be constructed by taking the shoulders of one body, the hands of another, the breasts of another, and so On. Was this humanist idealism? Or was it the result of a total indifference to who any one person really was? Do the nudes of the European oil-painting celebrate, as we're normally taught, the women within them, or the male voyeur? Is their sexuality inside the frame or in front of it? These questions and any others I may have raised will remain rhetorical unless it is women who answer them.