Book Review: A Year of Biblical Womanhood
Feb. 4th, 2013 08:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI just finished reading Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood, which is an interesting book if you like that sort of thing, although not so very interesting that you should run out and read it if you don’t (that distinction belongs to Kevin Roose’s The Unlikely Disciple, about a Brown student who transfers to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University to get the inside view of evangelicalism.
Unlike Roose, Held Evans actually is an evangelical, so rather than trying to understand the tradition from without, she’s critiquing it from within. In one sense it gives her book more authority, because she knows what she’s talking about; but at the same time, I think her project surprised her less than Roose’s did, because she knew in a sense what she was going to find.
The best example of this - while also being a good example of Held Evans’ strengths as a writing - is her chapter about the ideal of the Proverbs 31. For those of you do not make a hobby of contemporary Christian culture and/or the Bible, Proverbs 31 details the many accomplishments of a “woman of noble character”: she gets up before dawn, she cooks, she sews, she gives to charity, she not only saves money but invests it so it multiplies, she stands foursquare beside her husband, etc. etc.
Contemporary conservative Evangelical Christians tend to use it as a sort of checklist: the Proverbs 31 woman is the sine qua non of what a woman should be. Viewed this way, Held Evans notes, Proverbs 31 is more or less designed to make you feel like a failure as a woman: there is so much to do.
That’s the part where it feels like Held Evans knew what she was going to find before she went into the project. Indeed, her failure at being the perfect Proverbs 31 woman feels slightly self-willed.
But - and this is what makes her book nonetheless interest - she doesn’t stop with this low-hanging fruit: she learns that Proverbs 31 was originally intended not as a checklist for women, but as a praise song for men to recite to their wives on the Sabbath. The point is not whether their wives have literally gotten up before dawn and sewn pillow cases: it’s that they have been, in their individual way, good wives.
Moreover, she notes, Jewish women use the phrase from Proverbs 31, eshet chayil (valorous woman), as a note of congratulations every time someone does something difficult. You aced a tough test? Eshet chayil! Made a pie crust rather than using store bought? Eshet chayil! Finished one of the many fics in progress hanging over your head? Eshet chayil!
Held Evans is so taken with this practice that she starts to say “woman of valor!” to all her friends when they accomplished something, and they in turn are sufficiently taken with it to start using this as well. I approve! The world would clearly be a better place if became a common practice. Possibly I should start leaving this as feedback on posts?
Unlike Roose, Held Evans actually is an evangelical, so rather than trying to understand the tradition from without, she’s critiquing it from within. In one sense it gives her book more authority, because she knows what she’s talking about; but at the same time, I think her project surprised her less than Roose’s did, because she knew in a sense what she was going to find.
The best example of this - while also being a good example of Held Evans’ strengths as a writing - is her chapter about the ideal of the Proverbs 31. For those of you do not make a hobby of contemporary Christian culture and/or the Bible, Proverbs 31 details the many accomplishments of a “woman of noble character”: she gets up before dawn, she cooks, she sews, she gives to charity, she not only saves money but invests it so it multiplies, she stands foursquare beside her husband, etc. etc.
Contemporary conservative Evangelical Christians tend to use it as a sort of checklist: the Proverbs 31 woman is the sine qua non of what a woman should be. Viewed this way, Held Evans notes, Proverbs 31 is more or less designed to make you feel like a failure as a woman: there is so much to do.
That’s the part where it feels like Held Evans knew what she was going to find before she went into the project. Indeed, her failure at being the perfect Proverbs 31 woman feels slightly self-willed.
But - and this is what makes her book nonetheless interest - she doesn’t stop with this low-hanging fruit: she learns that Proverbs 31 was originally intended not as a checklist for women, but as a praise song for men to recite to their wives on the Sabbath. The point is not whether their wives have literally gotten up before dawn and sewn pillow cases: it’s that they have been, in their individual way, good wives.
Moreover, she notes, Jewish women use the phrase from Proverbs 31, eshet chayil (valorous woman), as a note of congratulations every time someone does something difficult. You aced a tough test? Eshet chayil! Made a pie crust rather than using store bought? Eshet chayil! Finished one of the many fics in progress hanging over your head? Eshet chayil!
Held Evans is so taken with this practice that she starts to say “woman of valor!” to all her friends when they accomplished something, and they in turn are sufficiently taken with it to start using this as well. I approve! The world would clearly be a better place if became a common practice. Possibly I should start leaving this as feedback on posts?
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Date: 2013-02-04 01:21 pm (UTC)There are lots of Biblical parts and passages that I really can't stand, even when I've had the exegesis ("No, no, no; it's not really about blindly following orders, even wicked ones; it's about having faith"), but sometimes I've seen that the passages aren't doing what I've always thought they were doing, and then my mind has been changed (kind of like it might have been regarding this Proverbs passage, if I'd ever known this Proverbs passage).
One of these is the sins-of-the-fathers-will-be-visited-on-the-children-for-seven-times-seven-generations one. I've always thought, way to be a cruel and vindictive deity, God! But then someone said, no, it's not about how things should be, it's a description of how things are--and it's said with regret, not punitively. Kind of as if I said, "If you throw that glass on the floor, it's going to break into splinters that are going to be hard to clean up, and you're likely to cut your feet on the fragments for months to come." If you take it as me laying out a punishment for breaking the glass, that's kind of harsh, but if you take it as me saying, don't do this, because it has bad consequences [which I, too, regret], it's got a totally different feel to it.
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Date: 2013-02-04 05:15 pm (UTC)And I agree with you about exegesis. Sometimes I just end up thinking that the commentators are reaching too hard - like, okay, I see why you want this passage to say this thing you say it says, but it seems pretty clear that the passage is actually saying something completely different and possibly horrible.
But sometimes it's really illuminating. When I first heard First Corinthians, I didn't like it at all, because it was in a context that made it sounds like it referred to romantic love (and only romantic love), with all the romantic-love baggage you get from movies.
When I read an explanation that made it clear that First Corinthians is not about romantic love, but defining a kind of love that differs from any mainstream definition we use today - love as a kind of universal compassion, rather than a particular affection - I found that much more inspiring.
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Date: 2013-02-04 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-04 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-04 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-04 10:33 pm (UTC)