Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Scripps Senior Theses Scripps Student Scholarship 2012 Can't Be Tamed: A Feminist Analysis of Apocrypha and Other Scripture Catherine Alison Ballard Scripps College Recommended Citation Ballard, Catherine Alison, "Can't Be Tamed: A Feminist Analysis of Apocrypha and Other Scripture" (2012). Scripps Senior Theses. Paper 104. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/104 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Scripps Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scripps Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CAN’T BE TAMED: A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF THE APOCRYPHA AND OTHER SCRIPTURE By CATHERINE ALISON BALLARD SUBMITTED TO SCRIPPS COLLEGE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS PROFESSOR JACOBS PROFESSOR RUNIONS PROFESSOR EISENSTADT APRIL 26, 2012 1 Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without help. I wish to express my gratitude to my advisor, Professor Jacobs, who was abundantly helpful and offered invaluable assistance, support and guidance, and without whom I would never have gained an interest in Early Christian Studies. My deepest gratitude is also given to Professors Runions and Eisenstadt, without whom this would not be possible. To the Religious Studies faculty, staff, and students who stood in solidarity and good humor with we the seniors, you have my endless gratitude. I thank my a cappella group, the Ninth Street Hooligans, for their understanding, insanity, and endless love through the entirety of this process. Pigeons are not required to succeed. I would also like to thank my family, who encouraged me most of all. To all my friends, comrades, and countrymen, here and abroad, whose skype conversations, text messages, presences, and well-wishes made this year, and my entire college experience, the most memorable years of my life so far. And finally, to the holy women who are the subjects of this thesis. Shine on, you crazy diamonds. 2 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………....4 CHAPTER 1: THE VIRGIN..……………………………………………………..11 CHAPTER 2: THE MOTHER………………………………………………….....29 CHAPTER 3: THE HARLOT……………………………………………………..45 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….....57 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………….61 3 Introduction: Can't Be Tamed "One is not born, but rather, becomes a woman." —Simone de Beauvoir When one thinks of the word "woman," a myriad of categories comes to mind. However, this presumably catchall word is not catchall at all. Boundless discoveries about gender, sexuality, autonomy, and modes of existence have created a slow, steady paradigmatic shift in the way people think, speak, and perform discourse. In particular, the discourse of women and gender has become inexhaustible, with the theory surrounding it becoming complex and sometimes confusing. The near universal aspect—like almost everything tangible one experiences in this world—remains that the word "woman", and more broadly, the system of gender is a social construct, produced by people to stratify and enforce systems of power. The same complicated concepts apply to what we call "religion." Just as when examining gender as a construct, one must take into account religion's history, doctrine, ritual, philosophy, and many other aspects. The texts I will be examining are from the Western religious tradition (focusing mainly on Judaism and Christianity) and deal with similar themes. A focus on women in religion narrows the topic but it remains fraught with many distinct interpretations, scholarships, and specific discourses. Given the multiple ways in which these constructed terms circulate, it is worth specifying how I will individually define them. Though the texts I use have common themes, they are divided into what I consider the three most societally important aspects of an ancient woman’s identity: virgin, mother, and whore. The Acts of Thecla and The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena deal with virginity. II Maccabees , The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas , and select chapters of Augustine’s Confessions represent motherhood. Finally, the hagiographies Life of Pelagia and Life of Mary navigate through the mire of sexualities that deviate from norms. 4 When I say the word "woman," I am using the Greco-Roman social construction. Almost all of the time, "woman" means "of the female sex." It is interesting that the writers of some of these texts explore the act of "gendering"—that is, to thrust upon individuals certain expectations of a specific gender role. They deal with this gendering in surprising ways, from removing femininity to enforcing it, from praising eunuchs to condemning them, even questioning, and sometimes overcoming, the Roman gender system. Gender, sex, and orientation are three different (but related) systems. Physical, biological sex is inborn, gender is socially constructed, and orientation is wholly dependent on the physical person and their attractions. However, in the Roman world, they were mixed together. Patriarchy, as I will define, creates a hierarchy of these three categories. More often than not, this force is harmful. Sylvia Walby's definition of patriarchy identifies it as "a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress, and exploit women" (Walby 215). Ancient Roman history is rife with societal constructs that fit this definition. In essence, the Roman system of culture has an obviously sexist bent from a modern feminist perspective. The texts I will be examining are directly counter-cultural, as these particular texts paint Christianity in antiquity. However, while the texts' themes (such as gender ambiguity, autonomy, and agency) suggest an attempt to escape patriarchy, they encounter major problems. As an example, some things that seem oppressive in the modern day, like starving oneself to fit a societal ideal, were in fact emancipating for the protagonists of these texts. I will be analyzing them possessing the knowledge that they come from antiquity. This acknowledgment of Greco-Roman culture will inform my analysis. Bodies in these texts are informed by a patriarchal understanding. The popular imagination that constructed bodies in Greco-Roman society can be seen through medical and philosophical texts of the time. For instance, Aristotle writes, 5 Now the opposite of the male is the female, and it is opposite in respect of that whereby one is male and the other female. And since it differs in the ability it possesses, so also it differs in the instrument which it possesses…The reason for this is that some of the body's parts are 'principles', and once a principle has been 'moved'…many of the parts which cohere with it must of necessity change as well … (Aristotle) A woman's body, he says, is "half-cooked." Many other philosophers, thinkers, and practitioners of ancient medicine also possessed these ideals, creating a hierarchy of bodies that one could not, and most often did not, question. Aristotle states, For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave; hence master and slave have the same interest. ( Politics ) Although his text distinguishes between females and slaves, both bodies were popularly regarded as lesser than those of free males. Foucault writes in Discipline and Punish , "This hierarchal societal system is echoed in the Early Christian understanding, but the foundational texts of the apocrypha directly challenge these ideas." (40) Previous Scholarship Foucault defines contemporary sexuality as something that the West highly regulates. According to Foucault, the West's view on sexuality is almost fully based on Victorian ideals. However, he points out in History of Sexuality that advances in science, the penal system, cultural shifts, and the increasing medicalization of sexuality created this Victorian, modern construction. Prior to Christianity, society and sexuality came from a different source. "Moral conceptions in Greek and Greco-Roman antiquity…were much more oriented toward practices of the self and the question of askesis than toward codifications of conducts and the strict 6 definition of what is permitted and what is forbidden" (Foucault 2.30). This code of sexuality is directly related to the gender roles both built and transgressed in the texts I analyze. Foucault's discourse on the body says that it is directly related to political power and, therefore, must be socially managed. This concept was especially true in the ancient world. In a culture that valued a hierarchy of gender, class, and education, all bodies that deviated from the standard (male) were considered, as classical philosophers would say, "half baked" or unfinished. In The Generation of Animals , Aristotle states: Now the opposite of the male is the female...since it differs in the ability it possesses, so also it differs in the instrument which it possesses. Hence this is the condition into which the material changes over. And when one vital part changes, the whole make-up of the animal differs greatly in appearance and form. These values of privileging one kind of body over the other are found deeply entrenched in these texts. By putting so much focus on bodies—Thecla's nakedness, Pelagia's shrunken limbs—the authors of these texts are saying exactly what Foucault is trying