Customer Reviews

Lot's Daughters: Sex, Redemption, and Women's Quest for Authority

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With Polhemus being the chair of Stanford's English department, he's certainly a qualified writer. However, I wished he'd have co-author this book with an ethics professor, or an Old Testament authority, or at least someone respected in the field of religious studies - as this would have lended to the books' strength and credibility.

The reason I suggest this is because the premise which the book rests on is derived from the Torah manuscript of Genesis - and with that said, I'm not convinced Polhemus treats this text fairly. I'd like to suggest why.

To rightly understand what Polhemus calls the, "disreputable Bible story of father-daughter incest" a firm grasp on both the literary context and the cultural context of the event is helpful. With that said, even a plain reading of the text shows these incestual events are not merely the result of passions run astray.

Lot's daughters believed themselves and their father the sole survivors of universal destruction; humankind, they thought, depended on their breaking taboo by procreating with their father. As a result, they succeed in getting their father drunk, and then fulfilling their plan to have children through him. The manuscript gives no indication that Lot initiated this event, nor does it suggest his daughters were drawn to him for any other reason than their desire for children.

Polhemus places this account in the the modern context of older men desiring younger women and younger women being thirsty for the power and wealth of older men. In his words, "...in which daughters fall in love with their father's lives and older men are tempted by the intoxicating power and promise of youth".

Certainly, both of these motivating factors (lust for youth and lust for power) may be true in what we observe today in society, but to derive those conclusions from this ancient text is to unnaturally reshape the story itself.

In Lot's Daughters Robert Polhemus has struck and richly mined the mother lode of social-psychological constructs running through human history - the Lot complex. Forget the Oedipus complex that so obsessed ancient Greeks and modern Freudians. As this book so thoroughly documents and artfully explains, there are powerful reasons why the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot's family, figure prominently throughout Western history. The Genesis 19 account of father and daughters ensuring the survival of the human species through an incestual act is an archetypal story woven into the very fabric of changing social norms and psychological dynamics unfolding over several millennia. Lot's Daughters is a riveting read about how this only Biblical story of incest manifests itself repeatedly in myriad guises and interpretations throughout religious, artistic, literary and public dramas.

Books brimming with such fertile insights as in Lot's Daughters are rare treasures to be savoured over repeated readings. Polhemus has tapped into a deep, subterranean flow of timeless human consciousness that wells up into particular times and places in new forms. Shortly after reading Lot's Daughters I saw the movie Sin City. At a superficial level the movie is grotesque in its hyped, visually repugnant violence. But analyzed through the lens of Lot's Daughters it is an extraordinary, modern-day morality play.

I also have been going back to many books I read over the past 35 years, seeing with more informed eyes a fresh look at how radically diverse authors intentionally or unwittingly embedded the Lot Complex in their stories. Many thanks to Robert Polhemus for a most remarkable map of largely uncharted territory well worth the exploration.

This informative book describes our culture's fascination with relationships between older men and younger women, especially fathers and daughters, throughout history. There are many references to what the author calls "The Lot Complex," which I think is a questionable label for the common (natural?) attraction that exists between those two groups, rather than the perceived need of Lot's daughters that inspired their crime.

The author documents unsuccessful theological attempts to explain the Lot story (why didn't God have anything to say about it?), and offers a lot of interesting information about famous literary characters, authors, and other well-known younger women and older men, e.g. the amazing popularity of Shirley Temple. The author is careful to condemn such relationships as usually destructive - especially to those delicate women who are particularly fragile.

When it comes to Woody Allen's infamous affair with his step-daughter, the author sympathizes with Woody's then-partner Mia Farrow, as if she were a helpless and completely innocent victim. But the way I read the story, what Ms Farrow apparently did (force her younger child to falsely accuse her father of sexual abuse) was far worse than Woody's infidelity with a consenting adult. I enjoyed the first ten chapters of the book so much I was planning to give this book five stars, but the chapter on Mr. Allen outraged me so the book is lucky to get four stars (my generous nature).

The author shoots himself in the foot by going out of his way to excuse women and ignore feminine responsibility for their horrendous crimes, apparently as a sop to current political correctness and the traditional duty of the Macho Male hero. Was God guilty of the same mistake by failing to criticize Lot's daughters?

The Lot story offers a lot of food for thought, but respect for political correctness prevents the author from offering any new insight into the story. People normally assume that sex requires consent. Although the rape of Lot by his daughters is slightly mitigated by their (mistaken) belief that there were no other men left in the world, they should have at least given their father the opportunity to consent by propositioning him first while he was sober. Lot's previous, cavalier, attitude toward his daughters' virginity suggests he might have consented. (There is no report of Lot complaining about his daughters' pregnancies out of wedlock afterwards.)

The severity of the crime of rape also depends on the kind of relationship between aggressors and victims. If Lot loved his daughters, then being raped by them was less of an injury than being raped by a stranger he was indifferent to, or worse, being raped by someone he hates or his worst enemy. Maybe that was obvious and unremarkable to the ancients, but it's no longer obvious today.

Some incest victims claim there is a "betrayal of trust" when a person rapes a close relative. But despite the betrayal of trust I would still rather be raped by someone I love than someone I'm indifferent to or someone I hate. Love is the best motive for granting consent, and lack of love is the best motive for withholding consent.

Some victimologists say that raping a close relative (through force or deception) indicates the aggressor didn't really love the victim, and that may very well be true. But if an incest victim claims the experience was worse than being raped by a stranger, I think that indicates the victim didn't really love her close relative in the first place either.

Why didn't God guide our interpretation of the complex story of Lot and his daughters? Evidently, after more than 2,000 years that question is still unanswered. Despite its shortcomings, this book is well worth reading.

- Frank Adamo, author of the documentary "Girl Becomes Woman."

Lot's Daughters is a very readable example of what you are paying $40K for at America's private liberal arts colleges. Polhemus begins with the compelling story of Lot - that antihero of the bible who was visited by angels, offered his virgin daughters up to the mob to keep the angels safe, then escaped with his girls and fathered two tribes upon them in a cave. Yowsa. If the reader is expecting an unreadable, oppressively erudite tome on the psycho-social implications of this - rest easy, dear reader! Polhemus tarts up history vis-'-vis the Lot myth and presents a very accessible analysis. Each section reads like a term paper for 1) Ancient History 565 2) Medieval History 605 3) Elizabethan History 565 and 4) Modern History 605. Each section picks a tale from history and applies the Lot myth. For current graduate students, it is a great example of how modern scholars view critical feminist/historical/English/sociological/psychological theory and how they want you to regurgitate it in your classes. For the recreational reader it is a scholarly revision of People Magazine - American Academia has sunk to conflating Woody Allen and Soon-yi, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky with the Lot myth. My personal favorite section was Monica and Linda Tripp conspiring to preserve Big Bad Bill's issue on the dress, and comparing that with Lot's daughters conspiring to seduce their father in the cave to preserve his seed. Oy Vay. But such is the state of the annual $40K you pay to educate your children.

A must read for any parent about to shell out the big bucks ....

a smart and groundbreaking book--you'll never look at the usual suspects the same way again.

Be aware that I have not yet read this book but only the present reviews( it is on order from the library). However Jon Krakauer's Under the banner of Heaven recounts the polygamy still practiced by jack mormons(a few perhaps) and tries to explain why young women submit to this practice.