Women at the Beginning: Origin Myths from the Amazons to the Virgin Mary

by Patrick J. Geary

In these four artfully crafted essays, Patrick Geary explores the way ancient and medieval authors wrote about women. Geary describes the often marginal role women played in origin legends from antiquity until the twelfth century.


Not confining himself to one religious tradition or region, he probes the tensions between women in biblical, classical, and medieval myths (such as Eve, Mary, Amazons, princesses, and countesses), and actual women in ancient and medieval societies. Using these legends as a lens through which to study patriarchal societies, Geary chooses moments and texts that illustrate how ancient authors (all of whom were male) confronted the place of women in their society.


Unlike other books on the subject, Women at the Beginning attempts to understand not only the place of women in these legends, but also the ideologies of the men who wrote about them. The book concludes that the authors of these stories were themselves struggling with ambivalence about women in their own worlds and that this struggle manifested itself in their writings.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Mythology

104 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Patrick J. Geary is an American medieval historian and Professor of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey

Reviews

[Jing Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una storia di ridimensionamento dei testi in chiave della donna. L'interpretazione parte da questi due ruoli "idoli e idolatri".

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting albeit occasionally dry exploration of European origin stories in antiquity and the Middle Ages that involve women. The author contrasts Greco Roman myths with Christian and barbarian civilisation origin stories to consider less the connection between these stories and the lived experience of women in public life and more what these stories say about the context in which they were created and, in particular, how their evolution speaks to patriarchal anxieties about the actual uncommon role of women in positions of authority and power. The exception is Mary who, in a standalone chapter, is analysed through genealogies presented in the bible and by others to understand why she was elevated, at both the beginning and the end, and Joseph was left idle until a recovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Ultimately it is a book about how societies make meaning and is a quick read, but I wish there had been more extrapolation of these meanings following the discursive descents into textual and philological themes.