A History of the Breast

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.

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.

Library Journal

Yalom, a senior scholar at the Institute for Women and Gender at Stanford University and the author of three other books (most recently "Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's Memory", LJ 7/93), presents a unique analysis of the role that the human female breast has played throughout Western history. "I intend to make you think about women's breasts as you never have before" is the author's claim. Taking the reader through the cycles of society's view of the breast-as erotic object or as object of materialism-Yalom does indeed make the reader examine the role of the breast by touching upon subjects such as Freudian psychology, fashion, art, literature, and pornography, among others. The sacred and the sexual are also examined and visually rendered by means of 99 illustrations, taken from all manner of media throughout Western history. The bibliography is extensive and proves that Yalom's work indeed offers a unique approach. Highly recommended for all women's studies collections, as well as collections supporting the social sciences and history.-Cynthia D. Bertelsen, Indexing Srvcs., Blacksburg, Va.

This engrossing work of original research is the first to consider how the breast has been perceived in the Western world from ancient days to the present - how it has been understood in religion, in the arts, in medicine, in psychoanalysis (by Freud as erotically secondary to the phallus, then by Melanie Klein as the original object of desire). Details the perception of the breast in Western culture from ancient times to the present day, exploring the religious, medical, literary, artistic, political, psychoanalytical, and social perspectives from a male and female point of view