Immaculate Forms: Uncovering the History of Women's Bodies
Helen King
Sep 2024 · Profile Audio · Narrated by Elaine Claxton
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15 hr 8 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
Throughout history, religious scholars, medical men and - occasionally - women themselves, have moulded thought on what 'makes' a woman. She has been called the weaker sex, the fairer sex, the purer sex, among many other monikers. Often, she has been defined simply as 'Not A Man'.
Today, we are more aware than ever of the complex relationship between our bodies and our identities. But contrary to what some may believe, what makes a woman is a question that has always been open-ended.
Immaculate Forms examines all the ways in which medicine and religion have played a gatekeeping role over women's organs. It explores how the womb was seen as both the most miraculous organ in the body and as a sewer; uncovers breasts' legacies as maternal or sexual organs - or both; probes the mystery of the disappearing hymen, and asks, did the clitoris need to be discovered at all?
Today, we are more aware than ever of the complex relationship between our bodies and our identities. But contrary to what some may believe, what makes a woman is a question that has always been open-ended.
Immaculate Forms examines all the ways in which medicine and religion have played a gatekeeping role over women's organs. It explores how the womb was seen as both the most miraculous organ in the body and as a sewer; uncovers breasts' legacies as maternal or sexual organs - or both; probes the mystery of the disappearing hymen, and asks, did the clitoris need to be discovered at all?
About the author
Helen King is Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at The Open University. She is a historian of medicine and the body, and has held visiting posts at Gustavus Adolphus College, MN; the Peninsula Medical School; and the universities of Vienna, Texas, Notre Dame and British Columbia. She is also an elected member of the General Synod of the Church of England, where she is vice-chair of the Gender & Sexuality Group. Since her first monograph, Hippocrates' Woman: Reading the female body in ancient Greece (1988), she has published on aspects of gynaecology and obstetrics from classical Greece to the nineteenth century.
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