Title: Women: Down Through the Ages, How Lies Have Shaped Our Lives
Author: Jerry Schaefer
Publisher: Winter Press
ISBN: 978-0578288680
Pages: 248
Genre: Satire / Humor
Reviewed by: Barbara Bamberger Scott
Hollywood Book Reviews
Author and humorist Jerry Schaefer (Isn’t It Kind of Funny That, Cruising through the Teens) looks at women not as the objects they are often forced to portray but as the human beings they have been from the beginning of time…and questions, why are they, even now, only “almost-persons”?
The first “lie” that the author cites is that Eve caused Adam’s downfall. In fact, he states, what she did was to take him away from Eden to start a garden – and a garden means work. And for that, Eve is blamed, even though she worked as hard as her man. Jesus treated women as equal to men, but the Church fathers soon put a stop to that. Schaefer’s treatise is filled with such ironies, well-chosen depictions of how women were banned from monasteries because they could teach as well as men, and by the 1300s, defined by Thomas Aquinas as men’s opposites – that is, passive, materialistic, and unlikely to try for spiritual perfection. At times, women were considered too sexually motivated, so celibacy or virginity was the rule; some thought, though, that women’s pleasure might dictate the gender of children-to-be, so some was permitted, but only for certain situations.
By the late Middle Ages, most churches placed tight restrictions on women’s behaviors. Joan of Arc was accused of “acting against nature” for donning men’s armor, and like many witches-to-be, was burned alive. Women in the 1800s had to bind their waists to be considered desirable. In the 1900s appliances were added to the domain of women, who, despite the conveniences, worked far more hours than their spouses, with little or no recognition. Sigmund Freud postulated that women were consumed with penis envy. Modern men still have no qualms about beating their wives or sweethearts, and women have been said to “secretly enjoy” this abuse.
Schaefer’s work is intensive, displaying his mastery of the art of satire while offering a plethora of facts, history, and citations of bold, outspoken females. Each chapter of his chronological take concludes with a multiple-choice Quiz that amuses with its range of extreme “wrong” answers. Despite some strides forward for the “weaker” sex, Schaefer asserts that in the 21st, women’s professional accomplishments are paid less, they are losing control of their bodies with new attention to anti-abortion trends, and violence against them is still a major private and public problem. Readers will find food for laughter on every page of Schaefer’s heart-felt treatise, and will return to it after solemn contemplation, to absorb the truths it proffers between the lines.