The Madonna, The Whore, The Myth: Deconstructing the Madonna/Whore Dichotomy in the Scarlet Letter, the Awakening, and the Virgin Suicides

“"This vilification of Eve was setting the stage within early Christianity for the redemptive character of the Virgin Mary and the “Eve-Mary typology," which can be extrapolated as the Madonna/Whore dichotomy. It would be male Christian theologians in the following centuries who would develop this image of Eve as a temptress far beyond what the biblical text describes, referring to her as “beguiling the man by means of pleasure”28 to where “it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman”29, with Chrystostom stating “what happened to the first woman [Eve] occasioned the subjection of the whole sex”30 so that “a well-shaped body is merely a whitewashed tomb; the parts within are full of filth” Greer, Whitney, "The Madonna, The Whore, The Myth: Deconstructing the Madonna/Whore Dichotomy in the Scarlet Letter, the Awakening, and the Virgin Suicides" (2016). Honors Theses. 943. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/943”