Woman at the Window: Biblical Tales of Oppression and Escape

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The image of the woman at the window is prevalent in the arts of the ancient Near East and has suggested interpretations ranging from sexual availability to frustrated curiosity. In Woman at the Window, Nehama Aschkenasy now invites a reinterpretation of this classic image, seeing in it a mythic representation of ancient woman's spatial constriction and her removal from the arena of history.In creative, analytical retellings of biblical tales about women, Aschkenasy demonstrates how recurring situations, dilemmas, and modes of conduct represent the politics of women's realities in premodern civilization -- how women's lives in those times were characterized by social and legal limitations which some accepted and others challenged. In each chapter, she recounts a tale involving a biblical woman -- such as Dinah, Ruth, and Abigail, that depicts her in relation to a predominant spatial image, whether sitting at the window, traveling along the road, or moving inside a kings palace. Aschkenasy examines the situation each woman faces and her response to it, then suggests how the tale represents a paradigm of female existence.Through these stories, Aschkenasy reveals how Hebraic culture saw man as a creature of time and shaper of history and woman as a creature of nature and instrument of procreation. She also offers a close examination of female rhetoric and verbal expression as an alternative to spatial mobility, showing how biblical women used language in creative ways to overcome the constraints of their lives.Drawing on modern literary and feminist criticism as well as on behavioral and social theories, Woman at the Window shows that these ancient tales uncover age-old culturalbiases that have survived through history and allows contemporary women to better understand their own lives.