Women’s Voices and the Cost of Going Public: The Song of Songs, Canonization, and Safe Spaces
The foregrounding of the female voice in The Song of Songs, unique within the Hebrew Bible, has long intrigued commentators. Women’s speech in the Bible is generally rare, brief, idealized and hardly ever reported between two women. And yet, in The Song of Songs, not only does the woman speak first, last, and most, she also speaks principally to a female collective. The fascination with the female voice in scholarship is related to the rarity of same-gender dialogue for women in the Bible, but also to the book’s canonization—a process guided by patriarchal hands. This paper will read the dialogues between women in The Song of Songs as private female discourse, and then consider canonization of the book as the moment this private discourse “went public.” It will turn attention not to the reasons for the book’s inclusion in the Hebrew Bible, but to the results. As the history of interpretation of the Song demonstrates, the transition from private to public discourse is fraught with difficulty. When women’s speech about men moves or is moved beyond the space of female dialogue, their safety and power are compromised. The allegorization of clear, powerful female speech about sex in The Song of Songs disinherits the original female speakers of their story. Recent controversies in media and politics, such as those surrounding the Shitty Media Men list and the Kavanaugh hearings, are sparked by this same transition from private to public discourse. Recognizing the ancient echoes in our contemporary setting illuminates the durability of these dynamics. Women’s private speech, be it a carnal confession or a whispered warning, does not go public without a cost.
Anna Marsh is a PhD Candidate in Hebrew Bible and Its Interpretation at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Her dissertation is on the intersection of food, gender and power in the books of 1-2 Samuel. She currently resides in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she works as Executive Assistant to the Bishop of the Saint Paul Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). She is an alumna of Lutheran Volunteer Corps (Baltimore 2004-2005), interned for the Minnesota Council of Churches and American Public Media’s Speaking of Faith (now OnBeing) (2006-2007), received two scholarships for language immersion study in Germany (2009 and 2012), then relocated to New York City for four years of study at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She has taught courses at Hamline University and Luther Seminary.