In this erudite and eclectic cultural history, Marilyn Yalom looks at 25000 years of ideas about the female breast, laden from the start with powerful and contradictory meanings. The 'good' breast (in ancient idols, fifteenth-century Italian Madonn as, images of French Republican Liberty and Equality) nourishes infants or entire communities. The 'bad' breast (Ezekiel's wanton harlots, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, the torpedo-breasted modern dominatrix) bespeaks enticement and aggression. In eight thematic sections - the sacred, the erotic, the domestic, the political, the psychological, the commercialised, the medical and the liberated -Yalom teases apart the continuities and disruptions in images of the breast across time. Her journey from Paleolithic Goddess to modern women's liberation movement is full of surprises. The author attends throughout to women's feelings, both historical and contemporary, as we confront the meanings our breasts convey, to ourselves and others, as life-givers and life-destroyers.
A cultural history of the breast must inevitably be read within the context of the male bias that has dominated Western civilisation; yet the breast has had its own autonomous history, often constructed from the fantasies of men, but nevertheless one that expresses the needs, desires and power of the women to whom breasts belong.