Woman's Lore Quotes

“From ancient Greece through to the modern day, our monsters have been used as embodiments of every type of unacceptable womanhood — and unacceptable womanhood, it turns out, has existed in almost every form. Our monsters hate children, want to be mothers more than anything but are unable to be, and are the mothers of multitudes. They are incredibly beautiful, hideously ugly, ugly but able to appear beauties, they are vulnerable young girls and women who are 'past their prime'; they have hunted men down for sex, turned men down flat, been too sexual and too frigid, too feminine and too manly. They are self-posessed queens, and innocent ingénues. They have been both too vain, and scorned for the fact they don't take enough time over their appearance. They have had penises, vulvas, and no genitalia at all. It is no wonder that so many women identify with our monsters: at one point or another, they have embodied almost every aspect of womanhood.
There are women who are more likely to be demonized: women of colour especially are exoticized, sexualized, and accused of being too masculine, too loud, too angry, to a vastly higher degree than white women, and men have used (and are, appallingly, still using) the idea that trans women are nefarious seducers to get away with hideous crimes. But the catalogue of our demons' qualities is a clear demonstration of what every woman knows on some level: there is no way of being a woman that can keep you safe from demonization, that frees you from criticism. And while this is a depressing realization, it's also a freeing one — if you'll be painted as a monster no matter what, you might as well make your own choices, and take control of your own destiny, rather than attempting to mould yourself to a contradictory ideal of womanhood that can be taken away from you no matter what you do. As symbols of 'unacceptable' women, Lilith and our demons are symbols of us all.”
― Sarah Clegg, Woman's Lore: 4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi

“But our demons are also a testament to the resilience of women's traditions and beliefs: surviving for millennia, for the most part ignored, mocked or appropriated by men, but passed nonetheless from woman to woman down through the centuries, vanishing only when women had found a new way of protecting themselves and their children. Spanning over 4,000 years and crossing continents, the tradition described in this book is one of the oldest and furthest-reaching continuous traditions of humanity. Against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the story of our demons is the story of the triumph of woman's lore.”
― Sarah Clegg, Woman's Lore: 4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi

“The plea 'May I have a straightforward pregnancy' is the prayer of every pregnant woman, and every woman who hopes to have a child, whether today or in the ancient world. Lamashtu and her descendants are the echo of that heartache, and that prayer, uttered by women generation after generation, down through the millennia.”
― Sarah Clegg, Woman's Lore: 4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi