Mar 26, 2024
Men recorded their mistrust and fear of female genitals very early. The reference to women as 'weaker vessels' in the Tyndale Bible of 1522-35, and the later development of imagery of women as leaking vessels, resonates with the theory of humours that saw women as cold and moist, and the fear of female menstruation and lubrication. As Shakespeare's King Lear says:
Down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above.
But to the girdle do the gods inherit; beneath is all the fiends'.
There's hell, there's darkness, there's the sulphurous pit –
burning, scalding, stench, consumption!
"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory
