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Searching for the Strange Woman: Re-envisioning the Good/Evil Dichotomy through Reading Female Figures in the Song of Songs and Proverbs

Park, Ji-Eun 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article examines power, ideology, and gender dynamics in the postexilic Persian social context, with special attention to the female figures in the Song of Songs and Proverbs, which have common motifs but different perspectives on the female body and sexuality. By developing Jonneke Bekkenkamp and Fokkelien van Dijk's argument that the Song of Songs can be read as a ‘subversive narrative against Proverbs, I seek to explore the human-constructed nature of the good/evil dichotomy represented through the Strange Woman in the Song of Songs and the Capable Woman (the Woman Wisdom figure) in Proverbs. In doing so, a postcolonial feminist perspective can be my methodological tool for examining how the images of the female figures in the Song of Songs and Proverbs in the postexilic context were manipulated and reshaped to serve the interests of the postexilic community and the dominant male elites and to regain their lost identities. A postcolonial feminist perspective suggests that (re)creating identity also meant retrieving their humiliated masculinity. Interestingly, the reformulation of identity accompanied the resurgence of the family structure, and the female body and sexual desire were viewed as dangerous and destructive to the community as well as to men. In this respect, the presence of positive views about the female body and sexuality in the Song of Songs may have caused the production of the Strange Woman figure, whose promiscuous body and sexuality are used as a rationale for restricting the female body and sexuality. Likewise, Woman Wisdom and the Capable Woman may have been (re)created in contrast to the Strange Woman figure in order to emphasize good wife and mother images. Therefore, this article aims to re-envision the Strange Woman figure in order to deconstruct the good/evil dichotomy of the female body and sexuality and to provide an alternative way of reading the Strange Woman figure for contemporary readers of Proverbs and the Song of Songs.

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