Catherine Kennedy, Department of Philosophy
The Netflix series The Good Wife (2009-2016) has run for a number of seasons, and continues to re-imagine Alicia Florrick, the housewife-turned-lawyer. At the outset she embodies wealthy respectability: her success as a woman is judged by her successful, handsome husband, two healthy, well-adjusted children, and her impeccable home. Alicia has no life of her own, as she has left her promising career behind in order to better serve her husband’s. Her life presents all the trappings of success; a good provider, social recognition, material comfort, but this is taken from her by degrees, from the time of her husband’s arrest for corruption. Progressively, Alicia is propelled back into the grown-up world of work, relationships, and money, revealed to be more than the equal of her husband in competence, ethics, guile, and resolve. She loses her whole world, but gains her true self, in a thoroughly entertaining style.
There is a fascinating ambiguity in the series’ title: The Good Wife. Although the title comes originally from Chapter 31 of Proverbs and its hymn to the ‘good wife’, ‘virtuous woman’, or whatever translation the Hebrew epithet is given, the biblical image is rarely the first reference which springs to mind in response to the phrase. We might think of Victorian wifely virtue,[1] or late medieval constructions of the godly wife confined within the home.[2] If ‘good’ is synonymous with ‘wise’, or ‘helpful’, the French sage femme, or midwife might be an appropriate reference: bringing children into the world, but also providing tinctures and elixirs which might end an unwanted pregnancy, leaving such women open to charges of witchcraft.[3] Is this what is to be expected of The Good Wife; to be a cautionary tale?
During the early seasons there is tension between Alicia’s new-found freedom, and the return to ‘normal’ we suppose will be required once her husband is saved from injustice and returns to his rightful place at home. Ultimately, there is no such return: Alicia realises that the marriage she believed she had was a fiction perpetuated at her expense. Although not legally divorced, to protect Florrick’s electoral ambitions, the couple agree to live apart permanently. So, is Alicia Florrick a good wife? Should we rather be asking how other characters embody their own roles and responsibilities? Which of the many resonances of the series’ title can the female lead lay claim to?
Complementarianism: Secular or Religious?
Although the Florricks are not religious, their lifestyle exemplifies an arrangement validated by conservative Christianity as ‘biblical’. A man works outside the home, and a woman runs it, in ‘submission’.[4] The two complement each other, so such a marriage is termed ‘complementarian’. In her 2016 study, Anna Stewart outlined the debate around this theology in churches in Brighton. Through her submission to male authority at home and at church, and through self-effacement, a Christian woman is taught to expect God’s intervention in her life, and the devotion of her husband.[5] Integral to this teaching on gender roles is the exclusion of women from formal preaching,[6] and Stewart documents a general unease with women speaking in public.[7]
The churches in Stewart’s study are influenced by the ‘Centre for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’ (CBMW), an Evangelical Christian organisation with a public website. One article featured describes ‘biblical marriage’:
Delegate authority to your wife, but remember she needs to see that you are her authority. Be a holy man of the Word and prayer. Not effeminate, but masculine. […] Your headship is God’s design for her protection and growth. If you don’t assume the manly mantle, then she is left exposed and vulnerable to attack and her femininity will be compromised.[8]
The same website takes the hymn to the ‘valiant woman’, or ‘good wife’ from Proverbs 31 as an exemplar for wives, concluding: ‘Ultimately, it’s about a woman spending herself to help her husband’. The fact that this woman allegedly works at home and spends her time ‘instilling wisdom in her children’ while so doing, is also emphasised.[9] In The Good Wife, these pressures are personified by Alicia’s mother-in-law, Mrs Florrick Sr, who claims to support Alicia’s return to work by policing the household. A mother’s right to absent herself from the apartment is, in the view of the grandmother, subject to the children’s lives being unaffected by her absence. She sees her surveillance as a necessary intervention to protect her adult son’s interests and impose his needs as paramount. As will be explored below, this perception of female, wifely, responsibility is not restricted to American television.
Housewives and Breadwinners
The Netflix series and the Evangelical discourse described above are, despite their superficial differences, dependant on a common set of attitudes and constructions within Western culture, which are perceived to be ancient and established beyond question. However, the gender roles declared to be so fundamental to the ‘natural’ division of labour in the nuclear household do not go back to our distant ancestors.
In her anthropological study, Housewife (1974), Ann Oakley documents the rise of the housewife as a cultural construct, and demonstrates that until the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century effected a separation between the work space and the home, the concept of a ‘housewife’ as opposed to a woman who worked, was unknown because it would have had no meaning.[10] Indeed, Oakley argues, church teaching on the inherent inferiority and subordination of women to men, rooted in New Testament texts[11] rather than Proverbs, had made very little impact on society in practical or legal terms, until the ‘housewife’ construct was in place.[12] From the eighteenth century onwards the economic dependence of women came to be perceived as natural, whereas, until that point it had been unthought-of outside the confines of the landed aristocracy. Children also now became paramount in the lives of women as constructed within the dominant discourse.[13]
The necessary complement to the housewife, the male breadwinner, is perhaps even more recent. In written evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee of the House of Commons, Dr Laura King describes the rise of the cultural ideal of the male breadwinner since the nineteenth century.[14] She suggests that the current ideal of a family man, engaged in full-time employment while actively involved in his children’s upbringing, dating from as recently as the 1950s and 60s, is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve as more men become employed on flexible and part-time contracts. King observes that while working patterns have required women’s increasing involvement in the workplace, attitudes to tasks within the home have remained heavily gendered, with an unrealistic emphasis on women’s responsibility, which does not reflect lived reality for many households, both currently, and in the past.
It is clear from entertainment such as The Good Wife, and discourse from organisations such as the CBMW that, whatever its sources, this gendering of roles and expectations is widespread across Western culture. This article will consider Proverbs 31 and its application to family life in this context. It aims to demonstrate that the type of relationship prescribed by organisations such as the CBMW owes more to modern attitudes being read back into ancient texts than it does to scholarship that relies on the assumption of a unified biblical discourse which, in fact, does not exist. This is best achieved with an interdisciplinary approach, combining history, literature, anthropology, and language, rather than reliance on a single analytical lens. It will begin with an exploration of contrasting roles for women within the books of the Old Testament, and will evaluate the claim that Proverbs 31 represents a new paradigm of gender roles in the post-exilic era. It will be shown that assumptions about the relevance of Proverbs 31 to modern life are both more liberal and more restrictive, than its original readership would have imagined.
Nasty, Short, and Brutish
The Old Testament is a collection of fragmentary representations ranging from the end of the Bronze Age in ancient Israel to the late sixth century BCE. The most telling evidence for dating the stories of the early books comes from references to war. For example, in Judges, Israel’s enemies have the advantage of ‘chariots of iron’[15] and in 1 Samuel, a sword-wielding villain is slain by a sling-toting teenager.[16] It is difficult to find a period of lasting peace in the prophetic or historic books, and the law codes of Deuteronomy make provision for genocide,[17] forced marriage of captives,[18] and the raising of citizen armies.[19]
Women as Collateral Damage
King David is a revealing case study, and his marriage to his third wife Abigail makes for interesting reading. David is living as a wandering marauder,[20] demanding protection payments from local farmers.[21] The situation of women is precarious. In one incident, the wives and children of David’s group are abducted by a rival gang, and must be rescued.[22] David himself behaves little better than his enemies. When he unsuccessfully demands a protection payment from Nabal, and is narrowly dissuaded from wreaking revenge by Nabal’s wife, Abigail, we see him laughing at her as she grovels at his feet. Nabal dies shortly after, and David sends for Abigail. She obeys immediately, becoming one of his wives.[23] Commentators have read this episode as political allegory,[24] and as prophetic intervention,[25] but it is closer to a subplot from a ‘spaghetti western’, or an Errol Flynn pirate adventure, where the male protagonist would be a villain, not a hero. There are some ambiguous words from Abigail cursing David’s enemies, which have been interpreted as an offer on her part,[26] but the fact that the authors felt it necessary to portray her consenting to her own abduction is revealing: the incident was seen to be credible, if questionable, and is a far cry from marriage in the modern sense.
David goes on to sequester his first wife, given to another man in his absence, rather than see her married to someone else,[27] fails to protect his daughter from rape[28] or provide her with any relief or redress after the fact,[29] rapes the wife of one of his generals[30] before having him murdered,[31] and imprisons a group of his concubines who are raped by his own son during a civil war.[32] That David should be generally lauded as ‘a man after God’s own heart’[33] arguably owes a great deal to the selective use of available sources. However, he is typical of pre-exilic behaviour and attitudes in the Bible.
Seen, but Not Heard
The biblical books of Judges, Samuel, and Chronicles have been described as the ‘bardic’ tradition of the Old Testament.[34] They portray a world of warrior men and their polygynous households. A man’s status is directly related to the number of wives he controls, and children he fathers.[35] Women are used as currency to cement relationships between men, and to settle disputes.[36] The traditions would have varied from region to region and over time, and these writings are hardly concerned with presenting a picture of family life. Their ideological preoccupations are loftier; theology and politics. Women have no formal role, but do have influence as wise women and soothsayers – and occasionally as prophets.[37] Status is obtained by motherhood. However, this does not mean that women have no agency. Abigail deflects David’s anger by presenting him with a large quantity of material goods which she can collect and distribute without asking permission.[38] The Shunammite woman who befriends Elisha builds a room onto the family home for him[39] – in Elisha’s eyes, the initiative and authority are hers. Cases such as these suggest that while women had no formal power, and were considered to be the property of men, they were active in the work force and exercised considerable agency both in the home and the wider economy.
A polygynous, agricultural society of the type described in the Bardic literature would be arranged around the economic unit of a woman and her children, or a group of women and their children, rather than the ‘nuclear’ family usual in western society.[40] In a society expecting war at any time, warriors would engage in activities aimed at maintaining battle-readiness, generally conducted outside the home.[41] It would be impractical to depend on them day-to-day. A woman’s domestic world would extend far beyond the house, with much of her activity in communal settings.
The fact that the biblical writers barely mention women demonstrates an ideology which David Clines (2015) has termed ‘womanless’.[42] The vision of the Israelite monarchy is one of long genealogies of men ‘begetting’ men, and tales of male heroism. Men run their world, while women’s voices are unheard.[43] The ideological construction of much of the Old Testament, grounded in the identity of its male, consortless, God; is one which seeks to impose a male viewpoint.[44] Women exist to serve male objectives, including bearing children, thus increasing the number of warriors available. This all-male fantasy has also been described as ‘homosocial’ in that men co-operate in order to systematically exclude the interests of women.[45] It is an ideology which continues to exercise influence today through complementarian readings and teaching. The most telling contrast with modern constructions of marriage is that there is no Hebrew word for ‘wife’, or ‘husband’. A man has ‘women’ which he is free to discard. A woman has ‘a man’ to whom she is tied. In the Old Testament world it is therefore not possible to discuss a ‘good wife’; only a ‘good woman’.
Alpha Motherhood
As the monarchy became established, as recorded in the books of Kings, it developed institutions in line with comparable regimes. In contrast to the informality and invisibility of women’s situation in general, one formal role with genuine power emerged; the gebirah, or Queen Mother.[46] Such royal mothers advised on policy and even commanded troops, although not all mothers of kings obtained this status, and it could be withdrawn. They also controlled the women of the royal household, including the King’s wives.[47]
In the gebirah, female authority resides with the mother of the king, never his wife.[48] Under the monarchy, the position of wife carries no apparent prestige. It is as a mother that a woman can hope for a form of recognition. This is not to suggest that daughters, sisters, and wives, never enjoyed meaningful relationships with their men, simply an observation of the ideology reflected in the literature of an iron-age culture. It does, however, underline the absence of any assumption of a special relationship or friendship between husband and wife, as would be assumed between modern spouses. These iron-age values are not ones mainstream western culture recognises today.
The Old Testament affords us no narrative examples of female dynamics opposing generations of royal women, but we can imagine potential scenarios. In the series, Mrs Florrick Sr is portrayed in such a way that her role could easily be perceived similarly to that of gebirah of the Old Testament. While speaking as part of her son’s gubernatorial campaign his mother is asked about allegations of sexual impropriety; she defends him absolutely. His exceptional good looks, she argues, and his political power, make him irresistible to women, who take advantage of him. In his mother’s eyes Florrick has unquestionably been unfaithful to his wife, but where a lesser man would be at fault, such conduct is normal in his case. Doubtless, a biblical gebirah would similarly have defended her son’s entitlement.
The marriage and family portrayed in the pre-exilic, bardic writings bear little, if any, resemblance to the rhetoric of the CBMW. Women are the economic backbone of the family, and appear to operate independently, at least on the occasions recorded in the narrative books. The male breadwinner is an unknown construct, and polygyny is the norm. Male involvement in the household appears to be limited to the exercise of authority, and values of masculinity are closely linked to the warrior status of alpha males in war situations. A ‘good woman’ is arguably one who does not need a man, except to initiate pregnancy and provide status, which may protect her from assault by other men.
The Peace Dividend
The hegemonic masculine role continued to be defined in terms of militarised patriarchy until the regime was destroyed by the Babylonian conquest and ‘exile’ in 597 BCE.[49] When the elite were allowed to return in the sixth century BCE[50] the world had changed. Christine Yoder observes ‘that life in Palestine was shaped by its place in the larger Persian realm’.[51] The warrior male, so necessary in the monarchic period, was a liability under imperial peace. Al Wolters[52] and Tamara Cohn Eskenazi[53] have observed that heroism underwent a redefinition from the Persian period onwards,[54] and significance shifted from the battlefield to the home.[55] The Proverbs hymn to the ‘good woman’[56], then, comprises an early example of this, which can be read alongside other biblical books of the same era such as Ruth, Esther, and Ezra-Nehemiah.
Admiration or Objectification?
Proverbs is a sapiential text intended primarily to educate young men. The ‘good woman’ therefore represents male aspiration, arguably an example of ‘extreme objectification’ along economic lines, albeit one which reflects the real lives of elite Judean women in the Persian period.[57] There are two reasons for this. Firstly, she is described as having a high ‘purchase price’, and presumably a proportionate dowry.[58] To illustrate the significance of this, Yoder lists documented cases from Persian Mesopotamia of husbands despoiling their wives’ dowries in violation of these women’s legal property rights, and describes the advantages for the husband of acquiring a wealthy wife.[59] Women may no longer be property in a literal sense, but control of a woman gives a man access to her assets and the product of her labours. However, there is now an assumption of monogamy in the contracts for these marriages.
Secondly, as Eskenazi states, we should avoid ‘equating productivity with prestige’, remembering the disdain of the Hellenistic male for manual labour, which could be delegated to slaves, or to women.[60] The ideal for the male was leisure, in the case of Proverbs 31 underwritten by unstinting labour on the part of the female. As Claasens points out, there is little sign that this woman receives anything other than ‘praise’ in exchange for her work. Far from ‘helping’ her husband, or working alongside him in the fields,[61] as the CBMW article suggests, there is no sign of the Proverbs husband participating in any work. The objective appears to be to acquire a wife who will render all such exertion redundant.[62]
There are, however, signs of change with regard to land. In verse sixteen, the ‘good woman’ ‘converts real estate into income-generating property’,[63] having considered and purchased the field herself. This contrasts with the pre-exilic tying of land to male birth-right. Whereas previously women could only inherit as placeholders for their future children, they can now engage in transactions in their own right. This reflects Yoder’s evidence of the financial independence of women in the fourth century BCE, and contrasts with the rhetoric of the CBMW, which places a wife firmly under her husband’s supervision, allegedly as a biblical principle illustrated by this portion of Proverbs.
The CMBW article expresses surprise that children are only mentioned peripherally,[64] although observers from the monarchic period might have been more surprised that the husband’s mother does not appear at all: female influence has undergone a generational shift. This seems unlikely to reflect increased female status overall, but it does suggest an important ideological change. Whereas a man’s mother could garner respect through her status as his parent, a wife might aspire to recognition for achievements other than childbearing, which was an inevitability rather than the result of any personal quality. The Proverbs hymn valorises activities not reducible to biology, describing a woman with the ability to take activities typical of women’s work and develop them as revenue-generating businesses.
Yoder presents extensive Persian-period evidence that women were present throughout the wage-paying economy across the region in a variety of roles including scribe, goldsmith, and stockyard worker.[65] This, coupled with the evidence for women’s legal rights to financial independence, indicates that the domestic picture painted by Proverbs, whilst allowing a wide latitude in the types of activities portrayed and not claiming to establish a universal norm, was in fact seeking to channel female energy back into the household and assert male ownership of the family. The articles cited above from the CBMW website demonstrate similar objectives.
Limited Gains
Overall, marriage in Proverbs contrasts with what had gone before in important ways, but remains very different from what is regarded as normal in the West today. Pre-exilic households were polygynous, living in times of armed conflict. Proverbs shows a world at relative peace, where monogamy is at least thinkable. Women are no longer explicitly owned as property, although their marriages and separations still involve cash and property transactions. After the exile, women can exercise legal rights, as evidenced by primary sources, although this only implied in the biblical books. Significantly, a woman can gain recognition for achievements other than having borne a successful son.
Less positive aspects for women are the lack of formal influence, and a persistent discourse seeking to restrict their activities to ones tied to the home. Most negative of all, perhaps, is the apparent lack of male participation in the business of earning a living. The ideal wife is one whose husband can literally sit and watch. This said, the monarchic manly ideal was largely absent from the home, preparing for, and waging, war. The in-division of labour is therefore nothing new. There is still no word for ‘wife’, or ‘husband’.
In contrast to modern complementarian teaching, there is no mention of wifely obedience or submission, no emphasis on children, no explicit restriction on a woman’s activity. Childcare, breastfeeding, preparing family meals; none of these activities appear. Gender does not appear to limit a woman’s activity in any way, but rather to intensify and broaden it, although the practicalities of pregnancy would inevitably impinge on a real woman’s mobility.
However, the Proverbs’ woman’s experience of life falls far short of what would be considered acceptable in modern conservative circles. Firstly, there is no right to leisure for the ‘good woman’[66] since, in addition to her daytime activities, she burns the midnight oil in verses fifteen and eighteen. Secondly, there is no evidence in the text of a meaningful relationship,[67] either with her husband, her children, or with friends outside the home. ‘Work-life balance’ is not something she appears to practise, and one wonders whether the totemic Sabbath rest applies to her.
Conclusion
Modern complementarian readings arguably distort Proverbs 31 in important ways, obscuring its progressive aspects in relation to what had gone before, while erasing the contingent nature of the evidence of family life in the biblical writings by alleging a set of unchanging biblical principles. For example, the claim that the modern gendered division of labour is derived from the bible is not borne out by close reading. Moreover, it presumes continuity in the lifestyle of married women across the millennia which the text does not support. However, the desire to root female identity within the home, and under male supervision, while curtailing women’s participation in public debate, can be as integral to the modern complementarian agenda as it was of the post-exilic drive to focus national life within the home.
With regard to Alicia Florrick’s status as a ‘good wife’, her progression from complementarian ‘wife’ to Persian-period ‘good woman’ may amuse: as she grows in autonomy and escapes the supervision of her husband and mother-in-law, she becomes ever more prosperous, gaining the respect of her children, and, belatedly, of their father. She also achieves moral independence of a kind unforeseen at the outset of season one. The closing verses of the hymn to the ‘good woman’ might please her: ‘Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her a share in the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the city gates.’[68]
Notes
[1] Vanessa Heggie, ‘Domestic and Domesticating Education in the Late Victorian City’, History of Education, 40.3 (2011), (pp. 273–290), pp.273-274, <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2010.529832>.
[2] Maren Lytje, ‘The Interior and the Abject: Uses and Abuses of the Female in the Middle Ages’, Culture and Religion, 5.3 (2004), (pp. 287–319), p.309, <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0143830042000294398>.
[3] Thomas R. Forbes, ‘Midwifery and Witchcraft’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 17.2 (1962), 264–83 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/XVII.2.264>.
[4] Ephesians 5.22-33.
[5] Anna Stewart, ‘Quiet Beauty: Problems of Agency and Appearance in Evangelical Christianity’, Religion, 46.1 (2015), (pp. 32–52), pp. 35-36, <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2015.1042990>.
[6] Stewart, p.36.
[7] Ibid., pp.36-37.
[8] http://cbmw.org/topics/complementarianism/building-a-marriage-culture-husbands-love-your-wives/, Accessed 15/02/2017.
[9] http://cbmw.org/topics/motherhood-family/who-is-the-proverbs-31-woman/, Accessed 15/02/2017.
[10] Ann Oakley, Housewife (Harmondsworth: Peinguin, 1974), p.31.
[11] Oakley, p.29.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid., p.30.
[14] Helen McCarthy, ‘Written Submission from Dr Helen McCarthy’, 2017 <http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-committee/fathers-and-the-workplace/written/47972.html> [accessed 29 March 2017].
[15] Judges 4.13.
[16] 1 Samuel 14.49-51.
[17] Deuteronomy 20.16-18.
[18] Deuteronomy 21.10-14.
[19] Deuteronomy 20.1-9.
[20] Susan Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 90.
[21] I Samuel 25.3-35.
[22] I Samuel 30.3-20.
[23] I Samuel 25.38-44.
[24] David Jobling, 1 Samuel (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1998), pp. 92-93.
[25] Mary Shields, ‘A Feast Fit for aKing’, in The Fate of King David, ed. by Beal Linafelt, Camp (London: T&T Clark, 2010), (pp. 38–54), pp. 47,54.
[26] I Samuel 25.27-31.
[27] 2 Samuel 3.13-16; 6.23.
[28] 2 Samuel 13.6-19.
[29] 2 Samuel 13.21.
[30] 2 Samuel 11.3-4.
[31] 2 Samuel 11.14-15.
[32] 2 Samuel 20.3.
[33] Acts 13.22. See also for example, Ron Edmondson, ’10 reasons David is called a Man after God’s own Heart’, <http://www.biblestudytools.com/blogs/ron-edmondson/10-reasons-david-is-called-a-man-after-god-s-own-heart.html> [Accessed 29/03/2017],
[34] Niditch, p. 90.
[35] Ken Stone, ‘I & II Samuel’, in Queer Bible Commentary, ed. by Guest et al (London: SCM Canterbury Press, 1988), (pp. 195–221), pp. 209, 212.
[36] Niditch, p. 135. Deryn Guest, ‘Judges’, in Queer Bible Commentary , (pp. 167–89), p. 185.
[37] Sylvia Schroer, ‘Wise and Counseling Women in Ancient Israel: Literary and Historical Ideals of the Personified Hokma’, in A Feminist Companion to the Wisdom Literature, ed. by Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press Ltd, 1995), (pp. 67–84), p. 78.
[38] 1 Samuel 18.28-23.
[39] II Kings 4.8-13.
[40] Sheila Kitzinger, Women as Mothers (Bungay: The Chaucer Press, 1978), pp. 54-55, 58.
[41] Molloy, p. 422.
[42] David J. A. Clines, ‘The Scandal of a Male Bible’, 2015, p. 2, <https://www.academia.edu/10977758/The_Scandal_of_a_Male_Bible>, Accessed 22/02/2016.
[43] Stone, pp. 208 – 217.
[44] David J A Clines, ‘The Most High Male : Divine Masculinity in the Bible’, 1976 (1986) <https://www.academia.edu/14079928/The_Most_High_Male_Divine_Masculinity_in_the_Bible>, Accessed 22/02./2017, pp 1-2.
[45] Mark K George, ‘Assuming the Body of the Heir Apparent: David’s Lament’, in Reading Bibles, Writing Bodies: Identity and the Book, ed. by David M Beall, Timothy K, Gunn (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 164–74, (p.169).
[46] Schroer, p. 75.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Elna K Solvang, A Woman’s Place Is in the House (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press Ltd, 2003), (pp. 71-73), p. 432.
[49] https://www.britannica.com/event/Babylonian-Exile, Accessed 15/02/2017.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Christine Yoder, ‘The Woman of Substance ( אשת ־ חיל ): A Socioeconomic Reading of Proverbs 31 : 10-31’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 122.3 (2003), 10–31 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3268385>.
[52] Al Wolters, The Song of the Valiant Woman (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001).
[53] Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, ‘The Lives of Women in the Post-Exilic Era’, in The Writings and Later Wisdom Books, ed. by Nuria Maier, Christl M, Calduch-Benages (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014), pp. 11–32.
[54] Wolters, p.13.
[55] Cohn Eskenazi, p.18.
[56] Juliana L. Claassens, ‘The Woman of Substance and Human Flourishing: Proverbs 31:10–31 and Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 32.1 (2016), (pp.5–19), p.7, <http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/jfemistudreli.32.1.02>, Accessed 22/02/2017.
[57] Yoder, p.446.
[58] Ibid., p.432.
[59] Ibid., p.433-435.
[60] Cohn Eskenazi, p.13.
[61] See (7).
[62] Cohn Eskenazi, p.13.
[63] Claasens, p.12.
[64] See (7).
[65] Yoder, p.436.
[66] Claasens, p.15.
[67] Ibid.
[68] Proverbs 31.30-31.
Track Changes 