The Discursive Suppression of Women: Female Evils as the Villains of the Motherhood Narrative

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This article focuses on the discursive construction and control of fe- male sexuality and sexual activity, which simultaneously lead to the definition of women as inherently evil and to their suppression. This process is reinforced through a inaugurated by a number of discourses, wherein evils play the role of the villains, either as evil women or as anthropomorphised beings that harm the mother or the unborn/newborn baby. The role of the female evil, a universally occurring archetypal motif, is to steal, kill or harm the child or the mother during pregnancy, labour, or puerper- ium. This motif is taken into account particularly in the framework of dis- courses that can be termed as medico-religious. Case studies of evils are given as examples in the article, with a focus on the motherhood narrative and medico-religious discourses. This focus provides an insight to the way in which evils pertain to the suppression of women within a more general frame- work. Female evils appear as necessary constructs of the aforementioned dis- courses to be able to control sexual activity and the motherhood related fears of women, especially through the internalisation of control and through shaping the relationship of women with other women.