Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
A radical exploration of the power and public (mis)representation of women’s bodies, from ancient mysteries to the present day.
Wild and strange stories have been told about the female body since antiquity. While legends of poisoned hymens and fanged vaginas circulated, the first creation figure, Mother Earth, fell out of popular cultural history and Christianity introduced the birth of woman, Eve, from a crooked rib. Ranging from the empowering to the absurd, ancient tales about the female figure and gendered body parts have not only survived the twenty-first century but continue to influence modern discourse.
The Shrinking Goddess brings together these myths about the female form and traces subsequent male efforts to ‘tame’ it. Mineke Schipper examines how women’s bodies have been represented since records began – the first Venus and vulva figures date to 40,000 BCE – and around the world, from the so-called island of menstruating men in Papua New Guinea to the Japanese supermarkets and European festivals where ‘breast puddings’ are still considered delicacies. Drawing together the vast reservoir of myths, proverbs, art, science and scripture that shape how women are seen in the present day, Schipper reclaims the female body as a source of power.
The Shrinking Goddess will appeal to readers of Mary Beard, Angela Davis, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Audre Lorde and Marina Warner
‘Mineke Schipper provides a fascinating and wide-ranging compendium of fact and fiction through the ages.’ J. M. Coetzee
Mineke Schipper is a cultural historian and writer. She is the author of seven critically acclaimed works including Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from Around the World and
Naked or Covered: A History of Dressing and Undressing Around the World.
Her writing has been published in The Times, El Mundo and the Los Angeles Times, among others. Schipper was foreign secretary of Dutch PEN, chair of Index on Censorship Nederland and currently serves as Emeritus Professor of Intercultural Literary Studies at the University of Leiden, with visiting professorships in Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso and China. She received a Royal Order of Knighthood for her contribution to social and cultural studies. She lives in the Netherlands.
Introduction
A Precarious House of Stories
The power of myths
The study of the female body
The established order
PART I: FROM FEMALE TO MALE CREATORS
1. Mothers of All Life
The divine breast never dries
Creation goddesses
Farming and fertility
From the creation of humankind to the invention of glass ceilings
How Eve lost her life-creating status
The ‘crooked rib’ in Islamic tradition
2. Male Creators
Creating life with and without a womb
Does God have breasts?
The end of Arab goddesses
Jesus as a woman and a mother
3. God the Mother Becomes the Mother of God
Immaculate conception
Maria lactans
The religious becomes secular
Buttoned up
PART II: DESIRABLE AND TERRIFYING
4. The Gateway of Life
The ‘Mystery’
Dark threat
Mounds of terracotta, gold or lapis lazuli
Gnashing teeth and other terrors
A little stone in the vulva
5. Powerful Blood
Hymen, the god of marriage
Virginal bleeding
Myths about menstruation
Monthly magic
Male menstruation
6. A Storehouse Beneath the Navel
Miraculous pregnancy
Male input
Courtship and its consequences
Dangerous childbirth and safe contraception
7. The Magic of the Nourishing Nipple
From the nipple to the grave
At the breast of an animal, or an animal at the breast
Supplementary breasts
Charitable nursing
8. Mammalia
Mamma
Multiple breasts
Milk ties as a ban on sex
Erotic lactation
Bare breasts in a globalised world
PART III: POWER AND POWERLESSNESS
9. Beat Your Wife, She Will Know Why
From a phallic perspective
The devouring mother
Breast rippers and other instruments of torture
Detesting one’s own body
The brain
10. Lessons From the Past
Oh no, it’s a girl
Womb envy
The theft of women’s secret
A Final Note
Acknowledgements
Permissions
Index
Bibliography