men are parched to impotence by the heat; women seem somehow to thrive in it, encouraged to burgeon as wantonly as flora and fauna. In another

We find in poetry, too

nd malleability make women more vulnerable to the onslaughtsof erotic desire upon psychic form. Second, female wetness gives women a weapon, which men do not possess, against the excessive heat and drynessthat may accompany desire.

That the female is softer than the male and much more easilymoved to tears, pity, jealousy, despondency, fear, rash impulses, and sexua

Greek myth assigns to the typical crime of women a stereotypicalpunishment in the legend of the daughters of Danaus: here are forty-ninebrides who murder their bridegrooms on their wedding night and are there­fore condemned to spend eternity in the underworld gathering water in a sieve or leaky jar.

Scylla clips a vital lock from her father's head, Agave beheads her son with her bare hands, Medea pulls the plug on Talus, Cybele unmansAttis with an axe.

The assault of emotion

They repeatedly open containers that they are told not to open

Salmacis is a nymph who merges her form with that of her lover to produce

Man determines the form; woman contributes the matter.

myth woman's boundaries are pliant, porous, mutable

this strategy for its logic and its practice by asking, first, what the ancients meant by dirt and why they disliked it; second, what they did with their dirt and their dislike. It will not be possible, for the most part, to distinguish physical from metaphysicalnor concept from cause

we face daily is that of touching one another-whether the touch is physical, moral, emotional, or imaginary.