Lot's Daughters: Sex, Redemption, and Women's Quest for AuthorityLot's Daughters explores the relationship of fathers and daughters and of older men and younger females in history, life, art, and culture. This ambitious, daringly original book shows how humanity has remembered and been formed by Lot's daughters—how the shocking biblical text describing the crucial relationship between that patriarch and his daughters has haunted the human imagination and shaped history and behavior right down to the present. Robert Polhemus terms this ongoing human drama—the mutual attraction between young females and older males—the "Lot complex," and illustrates his theory with a wide-ranging series of portraits that analyze and dramatize the lives and work of famous men and women who, in very diverse ways, have made the world care more deeply about the destiny of daughters. In witty, probing chapters on an entertaining selection of daughters that includes women as varied as Lewis Carroll's Alice, Shirley Temple, Mia Farrow, and Monica Lewinsky, Polhemus tells the story of men's ambivalent desire for young women and of women's quest for authority. It is an indispensable work on male-female relations. |
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Page 180
... MOTHER , GHOST SISTER , SPOOKED AND SPOOKY SELF As a child , Emily lives in a post - maternal world . Mother love is missing , lit- erally a thing of the past . Mother Maria died when she was barely 3 , and there's nothing to show that ...
... MOTHER , GHOST SISTER , SPOOKED AND SPOOKY SELF As a child , Emily lives in a post - maternal world . Mother love is missing , lit- erally a thing of the past . Mother Maria died when she was barely 3 , and there's nothing to show that ...
Page 181
... mother means tragic love . Her own knowledge of the agony and loss mortality can make you suf- fer comes to Emily directly with the ghastly end of her two oldest sisters . Her mother is mostly an abstraction , but the mother's namesake ...
... mother means tragic love . Her own knowledge of the agony and loss mortality can make you suf- fer comes to Emily directly with the ghastly end of her two oldest sisters . Her mother is mostly an abstraction , but the mother's namesake ...
Page 249
... mother . The Madonna is surely the mother she's missing : a devoted , inspiring , loving and loveable woman , untainted by the sexual pollution and the bad nature of men . Dora's dream history thus recapitulates biblical , incestuous ...
... mother . The Madonna is surely the mother she's missing : a devoted , inspiring , loving and loveable woman , untainted by the sexual pollution and the bad nature of men . Dora's dream history thus recapitulates biblical , incestuous ...
Contents
Part I | 5 |
Faithful Interpretations | 48 |
A Family Museum | 72 |
Copyright | |
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abuse Austen become cave century chapter Charlotte Brontë child Clinton culture Daddy daugh desire Dora Dora's dream Emily Brontë erotic faith fantasy Farrow father father-daughter feel female figure film Finnegans Wake Frau Freud gender Genesis Heathcliff Herr Herron human husband imagination incest Jane Austen Jane Eyre kiss later Lear Lewinsky Linda Linda Tripp lives look Lot complex Lot story Lot's daughters Lot's wife Louise Lasser male Mansfield Park married Mary Shelley Mathilda mean memory Mia Farrow Mia's modern Monica moral mother move movie myth novel older passion patriarchal picture play preserve psychological relationship role Rosemary's Baby says scene seduce seed seems sexual Shirley Temple Shirley's shows sister social Sodom Soon-Yi star symbolic talk tells Thereafter Johnnie things tion Tripp turn women Woody Allen words writing Wuthering Heights young woman younger