When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone
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Book Summary Author: Merlin Stone Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 1978-05-04 ISBN: 015696158X Number of pages: 302 Publisher: Mariner Books |
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Book Reviews of the When God Was a Woman
Customer Review: NOT Impartially Conceived--- Good Subject, Needs A Better Writer
Summary: 2 Stars
When God Was A Woman was an unanticipated let down. I'll tell you why.
I wish certain categories of writers would evolve past the chips on their shoulders. By this I speak of many (not all) feminist writers (like Stone), ethnic minority writers, and gay writers, who frequently set out not so much to speak objectively, but to bash another gender/race/sexual group with their project. Can't these offenders move beyond personal bitterness and be confident in their self-respect so that they don't feel the burden to aggress in their undertakings? They would bolster their credibility tremendously if they could achieve this state of professional neutrality and quit trying to change humanity.
Where I started off enthralled at the idea expostulated by this book, I wound up disgruntled at the limitations author Stone imposed on it. While she was thorough in citing archaeological evidence to support her supposition that women were once the earthly power brokers in human communion with the spiritual world before displacement under male-dominant systems during the agrarian revolution, never did she quite let go of the self-limiting need to vicariously "get even" for the conjectured crime of women being robbed of a (she believes rightful) place as head of human religious-spiritual practices. One moment I would be deep into excellently-written descriptions of dig-sites in the Near East, the next I'd be forced into yet another tiresome diatribe on Stone's grievances of choice.
What I wish is that this book had contained less of Ms. Stone in it and more of a straightforward story of the time when female spirituality was dominant. Had this been the case, she could have then taken us forward more completely to how, when, why the transformation to patriarchal religions came about. I think this transition, should have been the real backbone of this subject instead of the scant sideshow it is. True she does offer some lip service at book's end to the idea that gender equality is superior to sexism, but rightly or wrongly that-honestly-struck me as a concession the publishers forced into this book to make it seem less radical and agenda-ridden. Had this been a fictional story, then the writer would have been free to lobby her ideals via any story she might have chosen to create (a la Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series) but to claim to write history and then underlie it with contemporary sociological messages...that's not how good history is written. Furthermore, it wears thin when a writer who is a member of a group/race/gender acts as if she speaks for the entirety of that entity. She does not speak for me nor I suspect does she speak for most women. Merlin Stone is doing service to neither history nor living women by radicalizing this subject and polarizing her readers.
I still believe the history of religion and a study of its roots in matriarchal cultures is a worthy one and it awaits someone more unbiased to deliver it to the world.