Eve: A Biography (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780814758120)

The history of Everywoman--the Book of Genesis's famously debated character

Eve: A Biography is the history of Everywoman. Her brief adventure in the Book of Genesis is where the Western idea of woman began, and three thousand years after Eve offered Adam the forbidden fruit, everyone still knows that losing Paradise was Eve's fault.

Pamela Norris traces the evolution of Eve's bad reputation, drawing on a rich and diverse tradition of storytelling that embraces myth, folk tale and popular romance, and puts the spotlight firmly on women and their sexuality. From Dinah and Delilah, Pandora and Psyche, to the snaky Lamias and Liliths who haunted nineteenth-century painting and literature, centuries of disobedient women have been linked with Eve, the original bad girl, providing ample ammunition for male fears and fantasies. But Eve's story has also been retold by women, who have found ingenious and often subversive ways to free her from her disreputable past.

Stimulating, intriguing and wittily erudite, Eve: A Biography is the entrancing tale of a folk maiden who metamorphoses into a vamp, a mermaid, a bluestocking, a witch, a virgin trapped inside the walls of a fertile garden and finally, perhaps, into a thoroughly modern woman who chews the apple of knowledge with gusto and wouldn't dream of offering Adam a bite.

Author: Pamela Norris
ISBN-10: 0814758126
ISBN-13: 9780814758120
Publisher: New York University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/01/1999
Pages: 496
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.98lbs
Size: 9.48h x 6.35w x 1.77d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/23/1999 pg. 33
Kirkus Reviews 09/01/1999 pg. 1389
Library Journal 09/15/1999 pg. 88
Foreword 09/01/1999 pg. 36
Booklist 10/01/1999 pg. 322
Foreword 11/01/1999 pg. 52
Univ PR Books for Public Libry 01/01/2000 pg. 9 - Strongly Recommended