History of the Breast [Paperback]

Marilyn Yalom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 1998

In this provocative, pioneering, and wholly engrossing cultural history, noted scholar Marilyn Yalom explores twenty-five thousand years of ideas, images, and perceptions of the female breast--in religion, psychology, politics, society, and the arts.

Through the centuries, the breast has been laden with hugely powerful and contradictory meanings. There is the "good breast" of reverence and life, the breast that nourishes infants and entire communities, as depicted in ancient idols, fifteenth-century Italian Madonnas, and representations of equality in the French Revolution. Then there is the "bad breast" of Ezekiel's wanton harlots, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, and the torpedo-breasted dominatrix, symbolizing enticement and aggression. Yalom examines these contradictions--and illuminates the implications behind them.

A fascinating, astute, and richly allusive journey from Paleolithic goddesses to modern day feminists, A History of the Breast is full of insight and surprises. As Yalom says, "I intend to make you think about women's breasts as you never have before." In this, she succeeds brilliantly.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What's in a breast? That depends on who's asking, says Marilyn Yalom, author of this scholarly, illustrated treatise on the breast in Western society. "Babies see food. Men see sex. Doctors see disease. Businesspeople see dollar signs." Breasts have been denounced as wanton, or idealized as givers of power or life in images of Egyptian goddess Isis nursing pharoahs; sturdy, maternal Mother Russia; or the more eroticized, bare-breasted symbol of republican ideals in France. Psychologists, religious leaders, advertisers, and pornographers have rhapsodized over, vilified, and used breasts to sell everything from war to Cadillacs. And, finally, women have seen in them pleasure, power, sustenance, fear, or failure to measure up. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The image of the nurturing Madonna, invented in 14th-century Italy, resurrected an earlier tradition of big-breasted Paleolithic figurines representing fertility or nursing goddesses, Yalom claims. But beginning in the Renaissance, she says, the breast, stripped of its relation to the sacred, became the playground of male desire, taking on in the West a predominantly erotic meaning that it has not possessed in other eras and cultures. According to Yalom, writings on the breast by Rousseau, Freud, Jung and novelist Philip Roth reflect a male-centered, sexist worldview. With wit and dispassionate scholarship, Stanford researcher and feminist scholar Yalom decodes the social constructions of the breast as political symbol of liberty in the French Revolution, idealized domestic comforter in the Dutch golden age, modern advertising commodity and source of titillation in the arts, entertainment, erotica and pornography. She charts women's increasing involvement in the sexual politics of controlling their bodies and breasts, from 1960s bra-burning to today's growing concern about breast cancer. Intriguingly and amply illustrated with reproductions of paintings, sculpture, prints, posters, ads and photographs, this enlightening, often surprising cultural history will compel men and women to think differently about the breast.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (March 31, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345388941
• ISBN-13: 978-0345388940
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #513,766 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a sweeping view of western art and attitudes about breasts, July 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: History of the Breast (Paperback)

I found this to be an easy to read, informative book about how the west has viewed the breast in art, politics and medicine. As a researcher in the sociology of reproduction, I was impressed by her synthesis of wet nursing and breastfeeding in her chapters on the politics of the breast. I found her analyses compelling. The review of how the breast appeared in art was new to me and here I appreciated Yalom's writing style--accessible yet thorough. Her weakest chapters are the one on psychoanalytic treatment of the breast, and the one covering recent culture. I found her coverage and analysis of the psychoanalytic literature to be out of place and she didn't seem to integrate it as well as I'd have liked in the politics/art of the time. The final chapter on recent cultural attitudes and representations of the breast could have been an entire book, so I felt a bit cheated. It wasn't clear why she included some things and not others, and I think she gave short shrift to the current issues surrounding breastfeeding, esp. to characterizing La Leche League on the basis of one person's anecdotal quote. But overall, a great introduction to the breast and definitely a stimulus to reading more, especially about non-Western attitudes toward the breast. It might have been interesting to include a cross-cultural chapter... Finally, the photographs are numerous, interesting, and nicely complement her analysis.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous, July 28, 2003

By 

MotherLodeBeth "MotherLodeBeth" (Sierras of California) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: History of the Breast (Paperback)

With a wonderful blend of serious history and modern humor where appropriate, the author presents a thought provoking run down on the history over 25 centuries and the photos of Annie Sprinkles Bosom Ballet on page 268 made the purchase worth every cent.

As the author wisely notes that Westerners assumptions about the breast is often wrong, and that Non western cultures have their own fetishes be it small feet in China, the nape of the neck in Japan, the buttocks in Africa and the Caribbean. That through out western history the breast has been viewed as good and bad, and by men mostly and religious men in particular.

The book is excellent in showing how the breast has been used to depict power and justice be it in war posters (Bosoms For The Nation) or the lady of justice with one breast exposed. To breasts used to sell products or alas slaves. (The commercialized Breast) How the whole idea that breasts were owned according to some by the husband, or were considered babies domain. That it wasn't until the women's movement that women demanded that what was on their bodies belonged to them to do with as they wished, be it nipple piercing, nudity, no bra etc. (The liberated Breast)

There are photos of mastectomy survivors and lord knows dozens of bare, exposed, all size breasts, which I assume the reader would expect in a serious book about the human breast.

It is a book I am so glad I bought. Also check out her excellent History Of The Wife book.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MD/PhD Candidate, December 9, 1999

By 

Lawrence Zaroff (SF) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: History of the Breast (Paperback)

Yalom's book meets the highest standards for careful academic work, and, as a source, will turn out to be the standard for investigation into the subject in the future. But the appeal is broad and will engage the general reader, the historian, the physician. In short it is a good history, a good cultural study, and a good read. Fine writing, intriguing illustrations dilated to include such diversity as the political breast, the surgical breast, the nursing breast, the pornographic breast. An excellent analysis.