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The Female Reader of the Parables of the Lost

Manchester University Oxford Road, Manchcstcr M13 9PL

There can be no easy reclaiming of the biblical texts for women, because such texts are always already situated within patriarchal discourse that constructs the reader as male. Following post-structuralist theorists, such as Lacan, Althusser and Kristeva, it becomes clear that the exclusion of 'woman' from the text is more thoroughgoing than 'images of women' criticism suggests and that the hypothesis of a 'woman reader' is problematic. Examples from literature, film and art show us how readers and spectators are 'immasculated'. The 'parables of the lost' in Luke 15 provide examples of biblical texts that construct the reader as male. The reader, in reading these parables, looks at women and identifies 'himself' with men. When a woman reads even she is 'immasculated'. So beguiling is patriarchy that this gendered construction of the reading subject has gone largely unnoticed.

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