Lady Parts

Biblical Women and The Vagina Monologues

Blanchard, Webster

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781621895992
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

How might women in the Bible tell their stories if they were prompted to do so by Eve Ensler's controversial play, The Vagina Monologues? This collection imagines some answers to that question. The monologues herein are written by a variety of authors, including scholars, undergraduates, clergy, and laywomen; the content of the narratives reflects this variety, being at times faithful or irreverent, tragic or even funny. All seek to give twenty-first-century voices to women in canonical texts--including the Hebrew Bible, Deuterocanonical books, and New Testament--who are often speechless, nameless, or otherwise marginalized. Not for the faint of heart, these monologues not only end the silences but also add flesh and bone to characters whose experiences have too easily been justified, metaphorized, or altogether ignored. By naming the torn places in these women's stories, this volume invites readers to encounter both the biblical characters and their contemporary interpreters with an attitude of compassionate listening. Our hope is that such compassionate listening may contribute not only to more just readings of sacred texts, but also to the mission of Eve Ensler and V-Day to end global violence against women and girls.

PART I

Women in the Hebrew Bible

Eve

Dolly Van Fossan

One of the first humans in the Bible, Eve (Genesis 1–3), is probably most famous for two things: her creation out of Adam’s rib, and her role in getting humankind kicked out of Eden. The shadowy character of Lilith—a woman said to have been made from the dust with Adam but who left him after refusing to submit to his superiority—does not appear in Genesis but can be found in extra-canonical Jewish (and other ancient Middle Eastern) folk sources. She helps, in part, to explain the discrepancies between the two creation stories in Genesis 1–2.

Everybody always wants to know, “Why did you do it? Why did you allow yourself to be so easily deceived? What were you thinking as your teeth sank into that tempting, enigmatic fruit?” The questions madden me—not in themselves of course, but in the assumptions behind them: that I was stupid, or gullible, or passive; that I intentionally ruined things for everyone; that I caused the downfall of humankind; that I’m the reason half the population exists in subjugation.

I’ve seen the stories you’ve written about me—scriptures, “holy texts,” as you call them. I’ve seen the pictures, the statues, the drawings that are supposed to bear my visage. I’ve heard your preachers speak of me; they do it with reluctance or disdain. Yet none of you—none of you—has ever heard me.

Oh sure, I get one or two lines in your stories. “The serpent beguiled me, oh Lord, and I ate!” And I’m cowering—because I’m naked. Really? You don’t think I was furious that all this time God was enjoying a personal peep show without my consent, or that the man tried to shove the blame onto me—as if he hadn’t eaten from the tree too?

Alright, I’ll tell you why I did it. I did it for her. I did it for us. We’re in love. We’ve been in love ever since Adam over there couldn’t befriend anything unless it was sliced out of his own gut. Talk about ego! And, of course, I’m brought to him, like some rib-eye steak on a silver platter, and he gets to name me, and I’m just expected to go along with the deal. As soon as I met him, I knew it wasn’t going to work out. I mean, he’d complained to God about losing a rib but then was satisfied about the dusty banana dangling between his legs!

When I met her, she was just wandering the garden, as most creatures were prone to do. None of us—not even the animals—were entirely certain why we were there. God had declared that It created us and this was the Beginning. But given all Its issues—and trust me, It has issues—nobody really believed it. We just lived in this bland sprawl of garden: fruit trees, rivers, and each other. No fears, no pains, no heartbreaks—but no thrills, no joys, no bliss. I hate the art that my descendants created in imitation of me, but damn! What I would have given back then for even the most infuriating, lopsided, misinformed invective! Even if God created us, It didn’t bother to consider the possibility that we would tire of being Its windup toys. Half the time, I think It gave us the capacity to reason just to see if we would dare defy It.

But she loved defying It. She took enormous pleasure in it. Almost from the moment she was created, it was one of her favorite pastimes. She, of course, had come before Adam. Yeah, I know what your stories say. You like to think Adam was the first “model.” Unh, unh—Lilith was the first human being. And let me tell you, she was one helluva bitch.

God had created her as an experiment. It was satisfied until that point with Its animals aimlessly wandering around. Lilith, though, was God’s answer to Its own loneliness. It created her not from the brilliance of Its own perfection, but from the madness of pure, undiluted solitude. The cacophony of questions in Its head: Where was Its creator? Why did It exist? Why the nothingness? The earth It created was somewhat placating, but God still wanted answers, and so It created Lilith from the dust and breathed life into her.

Lilith didn’t have any answers for God. She didn’t particularly seem to care about how or why the world was constructed, or that her own creator was caught up in some existential crisis. She was adventurous, totally intrepid. She wanted to live life to the fullest for as long as it lasted. So when God told her, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die”—well, it was like God had drawn a map to her first destination.

Of course she ate the fruit! She had no idea what death was! Did God assume she would be terrified of an end to existence when Its own Being, Its own Existence, was so uncertain? When she ate, she became mortal and loved it. She knew Beauty. She knew Truth. She knew Love. She knew Feeling to the fullest.

God was pissed when It found out what Lilith had done. It tried to banish her from Eden permanently. But Lilith was already gone. She wasn’t going to stick around with her new awareness. Who knows where she went? She just disappeared like that sometimes. It’s part of her mysterious nature.

So God, finding Itself lonely again, tried a second model—Adam—to make up for the failure of Lilith. Of course, Adam turned out to be this passive, needy, whiny thing. God wanted obedience and It got it—but what’s the value in obedience when it’s mandated? Adam was a disappointment, another rough draft that still needed revisions. God wanted an equal, like Lilith, but one that It could control, like Adam.

And that’s where I come in.

Adam was told that I was made for him. He still likes to imagine that. God, of course, was really just trying to deal with the guilt of abandoning the poor boy after creating him. Meanwhile, It’s trying to get me to understand that It’s my friend and It loves me unconditionally, but if I ever disobey It, I’ll be cast forever out of paradise (or, as later folks would tell the story, damned to the fires of an eternal, demon-filled furnace). Yeah, no contradictions in that!

Lilith and I are more alike than Adam, though. Despite our disparate births, both of us have a streak of independence that God simultaneously loves and hates. She gave me the details on this creation workshop, the 101 on why I was created. She told me about the tree and the fruit. She was the one that convinced me to try it.

And oh hell, when I did—everything came alive! Her sweet, soft flesh, those supple, round, rolling curves, and a thick bush of curly dark hair (up there!). We made love under the watchful gaze of snake eyes, on the premium grounds of paradise. I knew then that whatever suffering I was in store for would be worth it—anything for a taste of Lilith’s honey.

Adam tried the fruit on his own at some point. It was kind of inevitable, really. I didn’t have to do anything to “seduce” him. Living with the prospect of never dying is a terror all its own. Adam couldn’t understand the known, never mind the unknown. So why not give mortality a try?

Needless to say, God was PO’d. Seriously mad. And really immature too. It gets all childish about the whole thing and banishes us from the garden. Tells Adam he’s gonna eat dust and I’m gonna have a hard time having babies. Like we didn’t realize pain came with the deal when we ate from the tree. God wouldn’t even speak to Lilith. It thought by giving her the cold shoulder It was making a statement or something. She didn’t care. She stayed by my side, nibbling my earlobe, making me giggle while God went off on Its tirade.

So, we left.

We went wandering to find ourselves a new home. We didn’t need God. God could figure Itself out, while we did the same for ourselves. I’ll admit, I ended up getting a bit bi-curious with Adam. Lilith wasn’t too wild about it until he suggested a threesome. We had some of the issues you might expect with polyamory, but once the kids came around it wasn’t so bad. A couple of fig leaves helped.

Where are we now? Can’t really say. Divine confidentiality agreements, you know? But I can tell you that I’ve never regretted my choice. Not once. Lilith and I love each other with a relentless passion that has only flourished since we left the garden. Each tender kiss on her exquisite lips reminds me of that, along with each gentle caress, each warm embrace, each soothing smile. She woos me with the charm of a thousand suitors. She reads my thoughts, my fears, my dreams. She shares them with me fully; she holds me in the night. I love her; she loves me; we love each other.

And I’m here to tell you that if you think I was the one that made you all have your wars and rapes and hate crimes and whatever other oppressive shit you have going on now, think again. Life begins and ends with Love; it’s only God that stands in the way of your happiness and your harmony.

Hagar and Sarah

Kathryn D. Blanchard

Hagar and Sarah are most famous for being the mothers of Abraham’s two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, respectively. Sarah is somewhat notorious for being infertile, encouraging her husband to produce an heir with her slave, Hagar, and then banishing Hagar and Ishmael out of jealousy (Genesis 16); later she bears her own son, Isaac, whom Abraham nearly sacrifices (Genesis 21–22). Hagar, meanwhile, is the only person in the Bible to give God a name (Genesis 16), and she, like Abraham, is promised a great multitude of descendants.

Sarah

If you ask me about my vagina, you’d better be prepared to hear a sad story. First of all, I had to marry my half-brother. He had never been particularly bad or particularly good to me; he mostly either teased me or ignored me, the way big brothers do. He started to look at me a little differently, though, first when I got breasts—really nice ones, mind you—and then later when I started bleeding and it was time for me to be married off. For a while after we married he wanted to have sex constantly. Sometimes he hurt me a lot, but I don’t think it was on purpose. He just didn’t have a clue how to please a woman—couldn’t find a clitoris to save his life. He never asked me what I liked, so in general I didn’t like it much at all. Every now and then, though, he would come to me with these crazy stories about how he’d had a visit from his god; he’d be wild-eyed with all these promises his god had made to him about us having lots of offspring and land. Sometimes the sex was even good then; something about his crazy look actually turned me on—got me wet enough that I could enjoy myself. But whenever my next period arrived he would get that scary look and I knew what was coming.

Hagar

If you ask me about my vagina, you’d better be prepared to hear a sad story. Things started out kind of all right back in Egypt. I had a loving mother, a loving grandmother. But before I became a woman I was sold to this immigrant. They just took me away one day; I didn’t even get to say my goodbyes. I wanted to cry but I didn’t have any tears. Instead I just felt empty, like a ghost. When I first met her, she looked as sad as I felt. Being her handmaid actually turned out to be okay, at least for a while. She didn’t have any kids, so she seemed kind of glad to have me around; she kind of became like a mother to me. When I had my first period, she was there to tell me what to do, to teach me how cold water gets the blood out of cloth better than hot. I don’t think she really had any other friends, and she hated her husband because of what he did to her back in Egypt. Maybe we wouldn’t have chosen each other as friends, but we were kind of thrown together so we made the best of it.

Sarah

There were some especially dark times for my vagina, namely when my husband told people I was his sister, while conveniently neglecting to mention that we were married. People have always told me I am quite beautiful. ‘Lotta good that ever did me. Once I was taken into Pharaoh’s household. That’s the nice version of the story. The truth is that my husband pimped me out, he said because he feared for his life, but really it was to make himself rich. He was very handsomely paid, and sent off with a scolding and a wink. The only good that came out of Egypt for me was her—I didn’t realize how badly I’d needed a friend.

Hagar

There were some especially dark times for my vagina, namely when she gave me to her husband to have his baby. For years she’d been telling me how much she hated him. How greedy he was in bed. How uncomfortable sex was. The most terrifying part for me was that he was crazy—he would get these visions where he would talk to his god, and then he’d fly around yelling about how he’d...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1: Women in the Hebrew Bible
• Eve
• Hagar and Sarah
• Bilhah
• Jael
• Jephthah’s Daughter
• Levite’s Concubine
• Peninnah
• Bathsheba
• Jezebel
• God’s Wife
• Part 2: Women in the Deuterocanonical Books
• Anna
• Judith’s Slave
• Susanna
• Part 3: Women in the New Testament
• Mary, the Mother of Jesus
• Bleeding Woman
• Samaritan Woman
• Woman Caught in Adultery
• Mary Magdalene
• Prisca
• Questions for Discussion
• Bibliography