Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet [Hardcover]

Professor Mineke Schipper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2004

In cultures all over the globe, sex and gender issues have been expressed in proverbs, the world's smallest literary genre. This fascinating book provides revealing insights into the female condition across centuries and continents, as recorded in thousands of vivid and earthy proverbs about women. Mineke Schipper analyses similarities, differences, and contradictions in the cultural norms about gender expressed in thousands of proverbs she has found from over 150 countries. Grouping the sayings into such categories as the female body, love, sex, childbirth, and female power, she finds shared patterns in ideas about women (and how men see them). Part cross-cultural study, part literary criticism, and part anthology, her book is a unique and intriguing resource to dip into again and again.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The proverb—"the world’s smallest literary genre"—is a terse but telling cultural lesson, says literary studies professor Schipper. In this volume, part anthology and part cross-cultural analysis, she unveils the "inherited ideas of ‘ideal’ and ‘deviant’ womanhood" from more than 15,000 proverbs that she has collected over 15 years of world travel. Relying on both oral and written sources in 278 languages, she compares and contrasts global attitudes toward women and discovers a surprising nexus. Where women’s bodies, beauty, gender role and image are concerned, the vast majority of world cultures (or the men in them, anyway) think alike. Pick any stereotype about women and one is bound to find a proverb in the book to confirm it, from the talkative nature of women ("A fish doesn’t need to learn how to swim, a woman doesn’t need to learn how to talk" - Ladino, Morroco) to the problems of mothers-in-law ("Who counts on his mother-in-law’s soup, will go to sleep without dinner" - Creole, Dominican Republic). The author reminds us that proverbs do not always reflect reality, of course, but instead reveal "ideals, as well as regretted deviations from such ideals, as imagined by those whose interest they defend." The collection also confirms men and women’s complex and interdependent relationship. Cross-culturally, men prefer women’s company to loneliness ("Better a bad wife than an empty house" - Baule) and agree that in sex they must first please their partner for their own reward ("Stroke a cow before you milk her" - Hausa). This is an entertaining, adroit examination of how far woman has come in man’s estimation, and how far she still has to go.
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Review

"A fine contribution to the cosmopolitan conversation that ought to come with globalization." K. Anthony Appiah, Princeton University"

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (May 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300102496
• ISBN-13: 978-0300102499
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,648,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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