Bellocqs Ophelia Analysis - 2005 Words

When one gazes at the posed risquà © photos that the photographer E. J. Bellocq took during the Storyville era many questions arise as to, who the female models were, where did they work, and why? Storyville was a legalized red light district in New Orleans. Storyville was the answer to the ongoing crime problem in New Orleans back in the late eighteen to early nineteen hundreds. After the closure of Storyville, the so called embarrassment was almost wiped from history. Bellocq’s photos, a couple of rundown buildings, and very few tales about Storyville are left today. Natasha Trethewey gave these forgotten women a voice in her collection of poems Bellocq’s Ophelia. She granted her readers a gaze into a forbidden world in a time that is long†¦show more content†¦Even with the progression, women in the Edwardian Era still were seen as domestic house-keepers and caregivers. Getting a job during this time was very difficult because women were limited to what jobs they were allowed to have. In Bellocq’s Ophelia, Ophelia talks about a tragedy that occurred in 1911, â€Å"In the paper today, tragedy / in New York City— a clothing factory, so many women / dying in a fire,† (Trethewey 22). Women could work in factories, mines, be maids for people with sizable incomes, and on farms; however women rarely found respectable middle class jobs that allowed them financial security without getting married. This information is also supported by the website article called Striking Women. (http://www.striking-women.org/module/women-and-work/19th-and-early-20th-century.) These glass ceilings were only part of the barriers preventing Ophelia from her intended job, presumably as a secretary. Ophelia’s mother was black and her father was white. Albeit the thirteenth amendment was signed and the south lost the Civil War, racism was a part of everyday life. In Bellocq’s Ophelia, the Letter Home poem states, â€Å"I walk these streets / a white woman, or so I think, until I catch the eyes / of some stranger upon me, and I must lower mine, / a negress again,† (Trethewey 7). The Jim Crow laws were just beginning, segregation was lawful, and horrendous acts of violence plagued black people. The one drop rule, a racial classification that was used