Suspicious Female Names

After reading about 15 chapters or so, I realized that of the cities mentioned in the book – Leandra, Olivia, Tamara – have feminine names. I didn’t want to assume that the rest of the cities mentioned will have feminine names too so I skimmed through every chapter and indeed, the cities were named after girls.

Why were women names chosen for these cities? I have a few different theories on this particular question.

1.    Women are usually associated with “beauty.” When a new city is created, when people live there, when the architecture is straight up mystical, one cannot stop but think just how plain beautiful the city is. This imagery just does not fit if the name was a guy’s.

2.    The cities could be named after females due to the concept of women giving birth to a new life. Cities themselves give birth to life. In a literal sense, cities are a place where many people live and reproduce. In a figurative sense, I believe it’s stating that while reading this book with the descriptions of the cities, one must take a step further into a deeper depth of imagination in order to interpret the novel. Thus, this book basically tells us how the readers need to create whole new level of imagination in order to perceive the meaning of it someway.

3.    The cities itself are men’s dreams – desires and fantasies. I think it’s a hint of sexism in that it shows the power of man’s imagination to develop a utopian environment where he can control everything around him, including women. After all, it’s Marco Polo who is telling the story and we don’t even know if the cities exist or not. If it was all his imagination (which he claims it is towards the end), it simply illustrates a male traveler that is attempting to satisfy his desires. The hint of sexism is further proven when after reading pretty much the entire book, there were only around three times (I think) that a woman actually appeared and talked. However all these times, the women were viewed more as sex objects or passive/background noises. For example, in Diomira, the traveler hears a women cry “ohh!” as if of sexual pleasure or in Armilla, the traveler watches women taking a bath. I believe overall that this just shows how women play an essential role in male fantasies.