| Title | : | Eve: A Biography |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0814758150 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780814758151 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 496 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1998 |
Eve: A Biography is the history of Everywoman. Her brief adventure in the Book of Genesis is where the Western idea of woman began, and three thousand years after Eve offered Adam the forbidden fruit, everyone still knows that losing Paradise was Eve's fault.
Pamela Norris traces the evolution of Eve's bad reputation, drawing on a rich and diverse tradition of storytelling that embraces myth, folk tale and popular romance, and puts the spotlight firmly on women and their sexuality. From Dinah and Delilah, Pandora and Psyche, to the snaky Lamias and Liliths who haunted nineteenth-century painting and literature, centuries of disobedient women have been linked with Eve, the original bad girl, providing ample ammunition for male fears and fantasies. But Eve's story has also been retold by women, who have found ingenious and often subversive ways to free her from her disreputable past.
Stimulating, intriguing and wittily erudite, Eve: A Biography is the entrancing tale of a folk maiden who metamorphoses into a vamp, a mermaid, a bluestocking, a witch, a virgin trapped inside the walls of a fertile garden and finally, perhaps, into a thoroughly modern woman who chews the apple of knowledge with gusto and wouldn't dream of offering Adam a bite.
Eve: A Biography Reviews
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Inequality permeates every story ever written, not just the classics. However, it is not necessarily the situations developed in stories which deliberately sub-ordinates women but very often simply the thoughtless language. But, boy, does religion/christianity have a lot to answer for and the people who have championed it over the centuries.
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I'm liking this book a lot so far. I've always been drawn to the idea that Eve is looming behind womankind -- the idea that we are damned because she was curious. I'm looking forward to getting out of genesis and into more modern incarnations of Eve.
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This is my car book so I don't get to it as often as I should. I think I'll start bringing it in to work to read at lunch.
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Aristotle thought we were "half-baked" men. Extremely interesting book that makes you remember we are only 100yrs out from earning the right to vote.
