Indeed, if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even greater.
-Virginia Woolf
Throughout some of the great novels in history the roles of women play an important part. Whether it is the role of heroine or culprit, women are seen as a key player in most works. This statement does not change for one of the most well known texts of human history. The Bible is filled with stories about women; they are deceivers, lovers, or a mere vessel in which to carry on a seed. Because the Bible is such an old text, one wonders whether it is because of these stories that women possess some of the archetypes seen in literature. In The Slave by Isaac Singer, a novel that parallels the Bible almost eerily, one can see the connections and influences that the Bible has had on literature and women’s roles throughout it over the years.
There are some misconceptions about the roles women play in the Bible. As David Plotz writes, “The women in the Bible have so far been either invisible, foolish, or vindictive” (Good Book 20). Plotz certainly has a point, when one reads the book at face value, however what he fails to realize is that because of these vindictive or foolish acts, there is a greater outcome.
The Bible has created an abundance of different archetypes for women. The major ones consist of Eve, the seducer and Virgin Mary, the mother, nurturer. In The Slave Wanda is portrayed as both. “He had resisted temptation for years, then suddenly fallen” (Slave 85). The language Singer uses parallels the language used in The Bible to describe the fall of man, which was caused by Eve and temptation. Throughout The Slave, Wanda is an Eve character because she continually tempts Jacob to break his religious piousness, but the distinction between Wanda and Eve, is that, unlike Adam, Jacob truly wants to be with her. He tries to validate being away from her for God, but in the end it is only the distance between them that separates his love for her. “She was a daughter of Esau who had lured him into adultery, a woman whose desire to accept his faith came with impure motives. In addition she was there, he here.” It is clear that Jacob loves Wanda because if they were closer they would be together and he eventually closes that spatial gap. Wanda is not the only woman who tempts men in The Slave. There is a constant incidence of rape occurring in The Slave. Women appear to be merely sexual objects for the men. However it is not only in The Slave that rape happens. There are also places in the Bible in which rape occurs. Once people read the text of the Bible thoroughly, it becomes clear that there are allusions made to it that people would never have originally thought.
Another similarity between the Bible and The Slave is that in the majority of biblical stories and books, women are the turning point in the story. Tamar deceives Judah in order to carry on the seed of her first husband, which in turns leads to the birth of Jesus; Abraham deceives the Pharaoh with the help of Sarah and Sarah is greatly admired by God therefore he grants her the ability to have “offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore” (Gen 22:17). Wanda also has this kind of immense impact on Jacob’s life. She plays a deceitful role when she pretends to be mute in order to mask her gentile identity. But more than that, throughout this novel, she continues to control the out come of Jacob’s decisions, and she makes him fall in love with her. The love of two people is worth more than gender and religion. Wanda has that power over Jacob. These acts of deceit are the same acts that Plotz over-looks in his analysis of women in the Bible.
It is interesting to note that although women are key players in the texts, some of the best characters have no names. A charity worker in The Slave is described with “kindness, gentleness, [and as having] a candor in her eyes” (Slave 120). She is one of the few women that are described in a good light in this novel, however she has no name. The same happens in The Bible. Lot’s daughters want only to help their father by making sure his blood line continues with the birth of a son, they play a major role in the text and they are good people, however, the readers only know them as ‘Lot’s daughters,’ no more. It appears as if the Bible wants to continually place a faVad of a patriarchal society, yet the women are central figures. By not giving the female characters names, it places them below the other characters, in turn implying that women are not as important as men. This seems to contradict the actual text however because of the obvious importance those women have in the stories.
It is clear that the Bible has influenced women’s literary roles immensely. By having the understanding of this influence, one can draw connections between thousands of texts over the ages.
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