Monday, April 5, 2010

Eve's Daughters

Today's teaser is from Eve's Daughters: The Forbidden Heroism of Women by Miriam F. Polster (1992).  The book explores differences in how men and women are heroes, like this from page 31:
"The woman hero usually relies less on muscular strength than her male counterpart and invents other ways to achieve a desired end.  Women rely more on persuasion and argument.  They also attend as much to the manner in which something is done as to the ultimate purpose.  The woman hero may find alternatives to direct confrontation, for example, finding common purposes that make opposition unnecessary."
I found more about the ways that women and men are heroic on pages 106 and 107:
"What was womanly about her heroism is its affinity to the setting where it occurred.  For her, geography was neither a stage for a grand adventure nor an adversary to be conquered:  it was a pervasive context for interactions with her surroundings. ... The personal well from which she draws her heroic strength is her sense of response to challenge in relationship to, not victory over."

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