Two women at the well: The “good wife” in patriarchal society
Abstract
Rebekah in Genesis, XXIV and the Samaritan girl in John’s Gospel, IV are the two characters of a diptych: both are portrayed while drawing water from a well. Yet Rebecca seems to be the pattern of the ‘good wife’ and the Samaritan girl – on the contrary – the pattern of the ‘bad wife’, according to patriarchal morals. So the act of drawing water from a well becomes a symbol of woman’s subjection to man during patriarchism. In contemporary times, a short story of Grazia Deledda’s abolishes woman’s subjection, replacing it by husband’s and wife’s complementarity.Anuac is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence 4.0. With the licence CC-BY, authors retain the copyright, allowing anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy their contribution. The work must be properly attributed to its author. It should be also mentioned that the work has been first published by the journal Anuac.
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