The Defacing of Self: An Experience of Womanhood in the Western Theological Tradition
Every once in a while, some spark of inspiration resounds in my brain and motivates me to peruse through my bookshelf once again. If I were to be asked at this point in my life my “greatest accomplishment to date”, despite examples of authorship and academic achievement, I would certainly answer “the bookshelf in my bedroom”. Multiple shelves of neatly ordered, chronologically arranged (per my reading of the texts, not of their authorship) books of various genres, eras, and topics sit aligned on white wooden shelves framed by knick-knacks of subjectival relevance. My classically-modeled amphora poses in front of my Greek readers and Platonic dialogues, while a beautifully carved model of a geisha rests in front of my Tales of Genji and the Heike.
During this most recent trip down memory lane, I looked through my rather significant collection of Penguin Classics texts, most of which were from secondary school. One work in particular stood out to me. Not for its content, necessarily, or the memories attached, but for the defacement I once bestowed on its cover. The Penguin Classics edition of Paradise Lost, with an introduction by John Leonard dated the year 2000, features Eve in the Garden of Eden, plucking the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil while the tempting snake looks on in delight, coiled up unnaturally tall. Eve is the subject and center of the work, and is, naturally, depicted nude since she has yet to discover the implication of her nakedness in a sinful world. Apparently, the girl I was when I read this book at 15 was already aware of what Eve had yet to learn. I, prompted by what exactly I do not know, colored over her nudity in metallic green pen in a sort of dress, stopping on her thighs, likely “fingertip length”. Just above her left knee, I used a red pen to color in a square.
At first, the significance of the square didn’t evoke any recognition or deeper meaning with me, until I remembered what it was like to wear a school uniform in the American South. Lectures about modesty, chastity, σωφροσύνη, and so on flooded back to me. To be clear, the lessons themselves had been so thoroughly embedded in my soul that I needed no recollection of note-taking during chapel time to employ them in every-day life. It was the instances of the preaching which had faded in my memory over time. I then realized the red square was meant to be a post-it note, per the common practice of instructors to stick a post-it note to a girl’s knee to see if her skirt was long enough. If the note made contact with the skirt, it passed the test. If they passed like two ships in the night, no meeting between them, it was to the office with you.
I had, apparently, been prompted to add such a post-it note to Eve’s knee as she stood naked in the garden, reaching up to grasp the forbidden fruit. Most shocking of these random edits to Eve’s figure was her face, or rather, the absence of her face. Gouged out with rough indentations, her face and her upper chest merely a window to the text on the page behind her. A snippet of the editor’s name and the title visible through the gaping wound. Also missing is the face of the macaw perched in the foreground, observing the scene. The snake is mostly unharmed, despite obvious attempts to mark him as well. His face bears some pitting, slightly concave from the effort, but noticeable only by touching the affected area. Simply ironic it seemed to me at first observance, that all but the serpent were grossly mutilated. Upon further inspection, irony turned to curiosity. My memory of my “artwork” has almost completely faded, and I certainly don’t remember why I chose to do this. Despite missing memories of the event itself, I have an indication of the sentiments which might have been lurking in my consciousness at the time of the disfigurement.
Ever since I can remember, I have loved classical art. I’ve been an enthusiastic patron of museums, exhibitions, and libraries with collections of works to behold. Hellenistic sculpture has been a longtime favorite of mine, as well as Baroque architecture and the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Despite my love for the aforementioned masterpieces, I was always unable to thoroughly appreciate the works which featured nudity, especially female nudity. I was of course informed of the distinction between art and pornography, and that the context of appreciating the human form is relevant to determine which category a piece may fall in. I was taught by those around me that it is perfectly acceptable to appreciate the beautiful design of the Creator God and the talent of the artist depicting the scene, as long as the framing and intention was not overtly sexual, objectifying, or lewd.
Despite the disclaimers and assurances from those in my church and my family, I could never bring myself to look at the works for very long, both for fear of what others may think of me and for the discomfort rising within myself. I was forced to explain my hesitation to examine such objects in detail during a class trip to Italy my final year of high school, during which I discovered, for the first time, that I had major misconceptions regarding the arrangement of various components of male genitalia. It was difficult to convey to my friends that my aversion to looking at the male form was nothing compared to the embarrassment and repulsion I felt when confronted with images of the female body. I was aware at the time that no one feels comfortable in their own skin during puberty. It is a phase of life which brings up, for everyone, feelings of discomfort and self-consciousness. It wasn’t until this time was over for me when we all began to swap stories of the dreaded “puberty experience”, and I realized my self-esteem had formed in a different way from my peers. When people spoke of being uncomfortable with bodily changes, I mistook such sentiments as being comparable to the deep shame and resentment I held for myself for developing into a woman. I feared for my immortal soul with every accidental glance of a mirror, and cursed my second X chromosome with every monthly cycle that would compel me to deal with the intricacies of femaleness.
It would seem that for me, based on a variety of factors and experiences within the context and content of my spiritual and educational background, conversations about modesty and chastity had incurred in me a profound self-hatred and a disgust for the feminine. I was deeply afraid of the human form uncovered, as it was in the garden.
I believe I gouged out Eve’s face and upper body on the cover of Paradise Lost as a physical manifestation of my self-image at the time, which was being shaped by sentiments such as those within the work itself, i.e. the disparagement of Eve and womenkind. I believe I deprived Eve of her face and breasts as a reflection of my wishes for myself, a sort of self-deprecating substitutionary atonement. I had begun to depersonalize women’s bodies as houses for their souls, my own included, and was hyperfocused on bodies as a source of temptation. These sentiments did not reflect my own struggle with lust, but rather those of the authors I had read, such as St. Augustine.
This phenomenon of women holding views which objectify, belittle, or hate women is often referred to as “internalized misogyny”. My internalized misogyny was largely an absent player in my relationships with other women. It was invoked only on the rare occasion. The primary target of its malevolence was against myself. Through my appreciation for the greats of Western philosophy, theology, and history, I began to see the world through their eyes, myself included. And through the eyes of the patriarchs of the tradition, I was inferior, weak-minded, prone to promiscuity, and incapable of true reason.
I will attach a few of the quotes which I have come across over the years, some of which I was aware of at the time of my disfigurement of Eve and others I have found in the years since.
“And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die. And do you think about adorning yourself over and above your tunics of skins?”
Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarium (On the Apparel of Women), Chapter 1
“For woman seems to be a creature somewhat different from man, in that she has dissimilar members, a varied form and a mind weaker than man. Although Eve was a most excellent and beautiful creature, like unto Adam in reference to the image of God, that is with respect to righteousness, wisdom and salvation, yet she was a woman. For as the sun is more glorious than the moon, though the moon is a most glorious body, so woman, though she was a most beautiful work of God, yet she did not equal the glory of the male creature.”
Martin Luther, Commentary on Genesis, Chapter 2, Part V, 27b.
“But woman is naturally of less strength and dignity than man …”
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Volume 1, Question 92, Article 1, Objection 2.
“… woman was given to man, woman who was of small intelligence and who perhaps still lives more in accordance with the promptings of the inferior flesh than by superior reason. Is this why the apostle Paul does not attribute the image of God to her?”
St. Augustine, De Genesi ad literam, Book 11.42
“Nature I say, paints [women] further to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish: and experience has declared them to be inconstant, variable, cruel and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment [or, leadership].”
John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.
“On this account, all women are born that they may acknowledge themselves as inferior in consequence to the superiority of the male sex.”
John Calvin, Commentary on 1 Corinthians
Despite my appreciation for the contributions of these figures in their realm of expertise, I question their assertions of objective theology. None of the previous quotes seem to be a reflection of the Scriptures themselves, but rather a personal and cultural agenda utilizing the Word of God to affirm the reason behind the construction of a society, which would be ideal for the speakers and their purposes. Given the vast amount of scholarship and sentiment of explicit misogyny within Christian theology, it is no wonder that a young, impressionable student such as myself absorbed it so easily, even at my own expense. Only now in hindsight can I see with clarity how terribly sad it is that a 15 year old girl was filled with so much self-hatred that she felt the need to vandalize her assigned reading, in order to avoid seeing a reflection of her natural self.
To define the specific phenonmenon of reading one’s bias about women into Scripture, I believe the term "eisegetical misogyny" accurately conveys the nature of the issue. To commit eisegesis is to insert one's own biases into a passage, to read a meaning in, rather than extracting a meaning out. However, calling these errors pure eisgesis is insufficient, in my opinion, because naming the transgression of misogyny actively identifies the bias in question and empowers us to remove that bias from our understandings of the relevant passages.
I also want to address the rhetoric behind Eve as temptress, and my perspective on it. While the Scriptures are clear that Eve did consume the fruit and gave it to Adam, the only canonical reference to temptation is in reference to the snake. Eve does not tempt Adam to consume, or at least that is not clearly an exegetical reading. She gives some to her husband, who was with her. The coloring of Eve sharing her discovery with her husband as some act of seductive manipulation was illustrated by a mortal hand, not a divine one. This stroke of sentiment seems to be shared in the weaving of tales like Pandora and her πίθος.
Women defying orders and acting outside of divine and/or social custom as the downfall of the world seems to be a common theme in world mythologies. I think it’s important to note that the Creation myth can be both a true account of the origins of sin in the world, and a reflection of sexist motivations. Analyses of the political impact of these accounts is not inherently incompatible with the views of people of faith. Criticality and Christianity can, indeed, co-exist. The fear of women’s independence or options besides dependence is a pervasive motivating force common among oppressive movements against women worldwide. It was persistent enough to find its home in the United States Congress who didn’t allow women to open their own bank accounts and have credit cards in their own names until the 1970s, convincing enough to take root in Islamist movements in the early 2000s which would legislate to contain the details of women’s lives with great intensity, and pervasive enough to worm its way into my young mind.
My view of Eve was, for many years, warped by sexism. The resentment I held for her as the woman who doomed us all was rooted deep in my soul. Not only did I hate her for getting us evicted from paradise, but also for creating legitimate reason to fear women’s independence and curiosity. As an aspiring academic, I was so very curious about the world. But who did I have to consider in all my curious adventures? The first woman whose curiosity led us to destruction. Everything I would ever do would be colored by her example. And, all of the ways in which I saw her were colored by my biases. As she stood on the cover of Paradise Lost, what read to me as her brazenness, reaching upward with no thought to her form on display, was instead the innocence of the only woman to experience nudity without fear of the sin of sexual immorality and of the eyes of men.
Having been reminded of the massive impact of "eisegetical misogyny" on my childhood self-esteem, what can I do but set out to be the kind of person and mentor who changes the tradition I work within and prevents other curious young girls from internalizing the same harmful rhetoric I once did? Hopefully, a future contribution to the literature on Biblical interpretation and the impact of religious symbolism, which I will be pursuing in more formal channels, inspired by this piece, could work in tandem with ongoing social change and the efforts of established academics and activists to prevent the traumatizing impact of eisegetical misogyny on female children as well as preventing future property damage for poor Eve and her likenesses.
