Mary
Eve, Mary-mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene are all prominent characters in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and to some extent are mentioned in the Quran. Regardless of whether or not a person believes these women really existed as portrayed within these religious texts, they had and still have a major impact on societal views towards women today. For women to be truly liberated and treated as equals to men requires the circumvention of conventional patriarchal, anti-feminist interpretations and misrepresentations of holy literature. According to Daly (1973) there is the “delusion that women should be ‘equal but different” (p. 2) stemming from how women are treated in the Bible but still going strong today. These texts influence how society constructs gender roles and norms for women which impacts equality rights, feminism, and oppression of women. Women today are still held hostage by these typologies leading to their continued oppression within society giving rise to feminist activism and the fight for equality between the sexes, which of course continues to be hindered within the patriarchal society. Mary the virgin is seen as innocent and needing protection, this supports the idea that women are weak and dependent upon the men in their lives to care for them. Eve is the good girl gone bad, the cause of humankinds fall and separation from God. This image supports the idea that women are evil and need to be controlled. Mary Magdalene, the prostitute, rounds out the construct for women supporting the idea that women without a man are sluts. These typologies have a significant bearing on the lives of modern women because they perpetuate an oppressive society where women are seen as less than men do. For women to be truly liberated and treated as equal to men requires “ a castrating of language and images that reflect and perpetuate the structures of a sexist world” (Daly, 1973, p. 9).
To see how Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Eve typologies influence women today,
To see how Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Eve typologies influence women today,
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