Reinventing Eve - Hardcover

Chernin, Kim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812913205 ISBN 13: 9780812913200

Publisher: Crown, 1987

Synopsis

The author explores mythology, religion, psychoanalysis, and literature to show how women's roles have been invented by men, and urges women to create an authentic female identity

About this title

Reviews

Last in a trilogy on the cultural implications of women's preoccupation with food (The Obsession, The Hungry Self), this radical, visionary work also follows The Flame Bearers, a novel on a sect of Jewish women that secretly worshipped the Mother Goddess. Though it is loosely structured and bogs down in psychoanalytic jargon and the author's murky, mystical personal quest, this is, nonetheless, an intriguing study of an issue of ascending import: how women can recreate a female psyche that will effectively challenge and transform traditional patriarchal culture. From Chernin's keen perspective, women, if they are to tap their authentic potential, must reclaim forgotten forms of female knowledge and power, often repressed because they are associated with oppressive mothers or religious taboos. Her discussion of the dilemma of Eve in the Garden of Edenwhether to eat or not to eat a forbidden foodexplores the meaning of food vis-a-vis female creativity and its prohibition in a father-dominated culture. Eve, "a heroine of disobedience," discovers she has been made in the image of the Mother Goddess and possesses her capacity for self-assertion, sovereignty and sensuality. Chernin also proffers a provocative "breast" theory to replace the traditional penis-envy explanation of why a girl turns from the mother and chooses the father in the course of normal development.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812913205
• ISBN 13: 9780812913200
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 191