Can't Be Tamed: A Feminist Analysis of Apocrypha and Other Scripture

63 Pages·2014·0.23 MB·English

by  Catherine Alison Ballard

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
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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
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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.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………....4
CHAPTER 1: THE VIRGIN..……………………………………………………..11
CHAPTER 2: THE MOTHER………………………………………………….....29
CHAPTER 3: THE HARLOT……………………………………………………..45
CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….....57
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………….61
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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.
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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,
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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
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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 to convey: bodies are an
important, if not the most important, tool of marking one's place in this particular system of
power. Most of the secondary sources identified herein cite Foucault, and he remains one of the
most influential philosophers and producers of discourse on gender, sexuality, and ancient ways
of being.
Gender, in simplest terms, is and has always been a system of power. In my analysis of
these heroines' transgressions of ancient gender roles, I will be using Judith Butler's system of
gender-as-performance. Butler states, "Gender is instituted through the stylization of the body
and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and
enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self" (Butler 520). The
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nature of this performative gender is especially prevalent in the apocrypha, wherein the heroines
give away their feminine, submissive traits as easily as they would give away jewelry.
Judith Butler writes, "The tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain
discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of its own
production" (Butler 522). In the ancient world, this seemed to be a rule. In Women, Gender, and
Religion: A Reader, Elizabeth Castelli states that as soon as one ascribes this particular definition
to religion, discourse becomes far more complicated. "As soon as the divine is analogized to the
human realm, gender emerges as a problem of both difference and power" (Castelli 4). This
statement is particularly interesting when thinking of the particular Greco-Roman context in
which God was (mostly) male. Different understandings of gender are central to the main ideas
of this thesis.
Different forms of sexuality, especially hagiographical sexualities, are a main focus in my
thesis. Virginia Burrus serves as inspiration, in large part due to her text Sex Lives of Saints. In
her introduction, Burrus writes, "In the stories of saints who steadfastly reject both comforts and
the confinements of conventional roles and relationships…we may discover not only evidence of
the historic transformation of desire but also testimony to the transformative power of eros"
(Burrus x). Early Christian women were in a special position in society and the greater Greco-
Roman vision of the world. Because women remain one of the most vulnerable groups of people,
stories of their defiance against societal, sexual, and gender roles continue to resonate today.
All of these texts were written in a larger context of Empire. The Roman Empire, in
particular, valued a very specific kind of male machismo, automatically excluding those who in
any way deviated from it. Christianity, as a mode of resistance, proved fruitful when redefining
gender. “Pre-imperial Christianity thus provides an elegant example of the knowledge of gender
that powerlessness makes available.” (Boyarin 23)
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The role of hagiography, or the way saints' lives were documented and shared among
laypeople, is an important aspect to how these women are portrayed. Hagiographies of women,
in particular, have a very clear message. "The message of such texts is simple: if the daughters of
Eve can remake their bodies into spiritual vessels, so too can all other sinners" (Coon xviii).
Although I am using more than one type of hagiography in my analysis, it is easy to see that
women's stories and experiences were often regarded as "teachable moments."
My analysis of these texts is explicitly feminist. Therefore, these analyses of the texts
depend wholly on my definition of feminism. Many types of feminism exist, especially in
academia; as such, I will use my understanding that has developed from many different sources.
Mostly, though, I will depend on Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake's definition of third wave
feminism in Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism: "We define feminism's third
wave critique of beauty culture, sexual abuse, and power structures" (Heywood and Drake 3). In
my particular brand of feminism, knowledge of these issues is essential. The ability to choose
where you fit in these issues, or agency in the face of adversity, is a central tenet of my
feminism. I refer to this type of feminism (perhaps prematurely) as "contemporary feminism."
I will be performing a contemporary feminist analysis of works of apocrypha, the bible,
and writings of various church fathers. By performing this analysis, I hope to determine if the
women in these texts come close to contemporary feminists, or if they are bending to yet another
patriarchal system. As I am focused mainly on Early Christianity and Gender Studies, I will use
my understanding of these varying discourses to analyze these texts. By doing so, I hope to
create a new, feminist interpretation of these famous stories.
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