Ever since Eve caused “the fall of mankind,” female curiosity has been seen as dangerous. Why does this Christian interpretation of Genesis still inhabit our cultural imagination? What does it say about our needs and anxieties? In this seminar, I intend to show that men constructed female curiosity as an act of immodesty to mask a gesture of insubordination. Eve is the mediating figure that makes it possible to link the curious woman and the “femme fatale.” My goal is to reveal another cultural history of female curiosity by bringing together literature and painting, philosophy and theology, films and visual representations.
I want to unpack the stereotype of the curious woman to understand why it persists today (from the “gossip girl” to the “learned woman”) and to decipher the way in which it engenders the stereotype of the “femme fatale,” which leads to simplistic and reductive oppositions: the mother and the whore (Eve and Lilith); the sensual woman and the pure woman (Eve and the Virgin Mary; Mary Magdalene and Mary); the sacrificial mother and the sacrificing mother (Mary and Medea). By weaving these stories together, I aim to highlight unexpected filiations and new associations that allow us to rethink the misogynist heritage that has become a source of anxiety in our civilization.