Women & Power: A Manifesto

Beard is our most famous classicist, with a gift for bringing ancient Greece and Rome alive on the page like no one else. She is a writer of exceptional erudition and biting wit, and reading her is always a pleasure. This latest manifesto...is no exception...Beard has written an indictment, perhaps her most uncompromising to date, of an ancient past that she is hardly asking us - has never unequivocally asked us - to celebrate. As far as women are concerned, in relation to this ancestral legacy, there is very little to be proud about...The question I finally take from this brilliant book is: what would such power - no rape, no guns, no shutting up of women - look like?
A pithy exploration of misogyny's tangled cultural roots. Based on a series of lectures, this slim volume draws on Beard's deep knowledge of the classical world and her personal experience as a target of online sexist abuse. She reflects on the gendered structures of power, from voiceless women in Ovid's Metamorphoses to feminists "reclaiming" Medusa. With clearsightedness and wry humour, this self-described "gobby woman" proves public speech is no longer the preserve of maleness. More power to her.
An urgent feminist cri de coeur, spot-on in its utterly reasonable plea that a woman 'who dares to open her mouth in public' actually be given a hearing.'
[A] sparkling and forceful manifesto...The book is a straight shot of adrenaline.--Parul Sehgal
A clear, rich, subversive and witty argument about what power has meant to Western civilization from ancient times, and how its meaning could be changed in the future.--Anita Felicelli