Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • The Fetishization of Female Exempla: Mary, Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas

  • Sarah Parkhouse
  • Journal:
    New Testament Studies / Volume 63 / Issue 4 / October 2017
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    12 September 2017, pp. 567-587
    Print publication:
    October 2017

  • Mary, Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas are often seen as female exempla both in the early Christian world and in their modern reception. They are considered model teachers, martyrs and apostles, and counter-cultural as they surpass the normative gender hierarchy. Yet, the texts that tell their stories are not so clear-cut. In characterising their protagonists, they repeatedly place them in sexualized or subordinate roles – they are condescended to, distrusted and exhibited. In the end, the women are favoured by the divine but hold little power over their male peers. Even as these texts appear to challenge the patriarchal society from which they stem, they reinscribe it.