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Summary
Summary
Why are sex and jewelry, particularly rings, so often connected? Why do rings continually appear in stories about marriage and adultery, love and betrayal, loss and recovery, identity and masquerade? What is the mythology that makes finger rings symbols of true (or, as the case may be, untrue) love? The cross-cultural distribution of the mythology of sexual rings is impressive - from ancient India and Greece through the Arab world to Shakespeare, Marie Antoinette, Wagner, nineteenth-century novels, Hollywood, and the De Beers advertising campaign that gave us the expression, "Diamonds Are Forever." Each chapter of The Ring of Truth, like a charm on a charm bracelet, considers a different constellation of stories: stories about rings lost and found in fish; forgetful husbands and clever wives; treacherous royal necklaces; fake jewelry and real women; modern women's revolt against the hegemony of jewelry; and the clash between common sense and conventional narratives about rings. Herein lie signet rings, betrothal rings, and magic rings of invisibility or memory. The stories are linked by a common set of meanings, such as love symbolized by the circular and unbroken shape of the ring: infinite, constant, eternal--a meaning that the stories often prove tragically false. While most of the rings in the stories originally belonged to men, or were given to women by men, Wendy Doniger shows that it is the women who are important in these stories, as they are the ones who put the jewelry to work in the plots.
Author Notes
Wendy Doniger is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago and the author of over 40 books, including On Hinduism and Redeeming the Kamasutra.
Reviews (2)
Choice Review
Doniger (history of religion, Univ. of Chicago) has the uncanny ability to delight and teach at the same time. Her whimsical approach to complicated material causes scholars to marvel and nonspecialists to be entranced. In the present volume, she lovingly details jewelry, in particular rings--wedding rings, mythological rings, magic rings, and so on--and examines how myths of rings are bound to love and the relationship between women and men. Discussion of marriage rings, rings fished from the sea, rings of memory and forgetfulness, and Siegfried's ring is followed by an exploration of the diamond and its place at the center of ideas of sex and jewelry. Of particular note is the extensive examination of Indian symbolic rings. The audience for this book cannot be overestimated. This wonderful book reads like a true modern best seller as well as a thoughtful, scholarly endeavor. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Linda L. Lam-Easton, California State University, Northridge
Library Journal Review
Doniger (Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions, Univ. of Chicago; Redeeming the Kamasutra) follows the circular link connecting sex, money, and jewelry in this collection of mythology about rings. There are no Tolkien-esque magic rings in these stories, as Doniger points out in the introduction, but the rings in question possess a different kind of power: namely, the power to represent cultural assumptions about gender and sexuality in any given era. Thus, Doniger shows how rings have been used in myth and literature to safeguard chastity and prove infidelity, identify lost heirs, recover lost memories, entangle reluctant husbands, and liberate mistreated wives. Doniger's exploration of the ring's symbolism as a manacle that binds a woman to a man is particularly insightful, as is her witty deconstruction of the modern myth of the diamond engagement ring that proves to have much more to do with savvy marketing than any enduring romantic tradition. Drawing on European, Indian, and Middle Eastern mythology, and including discussions of jewelry-related plots from the Arthurian legends, Norse sagas, and 20th-century films and musicals, Doniger supplies ample evidence of a ring's shifting ability to represent the promise of love or the oppression of jealousy. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in mythology, sexuality, and gender roles.-Sara Shreve, Newton, KS © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. xi |
| Preface: My Family Jewels and Other Tall Tales | p. xv |
| Introduction: The Signifying Ring | p. xix |
| 1 Marriage Rings (and Adultery Rings) | p. 1 |
| Rings in History | p. 1 |
| The Meaning of Rings | p. 2 |
| The Signet Ring | p. 4 |
| The Ring on Her Finger | p. 8 |
| The Sexual Ring | p. 10 |
| Hans Carvel's Ring | p. 15 |
| The Vagina Monologues | p. 18 |
| The Rings of Wives and Courtesans | p. 20 |
| 2 The Ring Fished from the Ocean | p. 25 |
| The Story in the Fish | p. 25 |
| Solomon's Ring | p. 27 |
| Polycrates's Ring | p. 30 |
| The Bishop of Glasgow's Salmon | p. 31 |
| The (Not-So-) Fortunate Farmer's Daughter | p. 34 |
| The Child and the Ring in the Water | p. 37 |
| The Family Romance | p. 40 |
| The Pope's Ring and the Fish | p. 41 |
| Rings of Incest | p. 43 |
| Cinderella's Ring | p. 45 |
| Cinderella's Fish | p. 48 |
| Shakespeare's Rings I: The Lost Child | p. 50 |
| The Ring (and Child) in the Fish in the News | p. 53 |
| The Token Rings of Lost Children | p. 58 |
| 3 Shakuntala and the Ring of Memory | p. 61 |
| Rings in Ancient India | p. 62 |
| Sita's Jewels | p. 63 |
| Ratnavali, the Lady with the Necklace | p. 66 |
| The Rejection of Shakuntala | p. 69 |
| The Ring of the Bodhisattva | p. 71 |
| The Recognition of Shakuntala | p. 74 |
| The Return of the Repressed | p. 83 |
| The Lost and Found of Rings | p. 85 |
| 4 Rings of Forgetfulness in Medieval European Romances | p. 87 |
| The Man Who Forgot His Wife When He Lost His Ring | p. 87 |
| Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, and the Lady of the Fountain | p. 89 |
| Lancelot and Guinevere | p. 95 |
| Tristan and Isolde | p. 97 |
| The Ring on the Statue | p. 103 |
| Shakespeare's Rings II: The Lying Ring | p. 106 |
| 5 Siegfried's Ring and Wagner's Ring | p. 110 |
| Siegfried and Brünnhilde | p. 110 |
| The Man Who Lost His Ring When He Forgot His Wife | p. 111 |
| The Twilight of the Ring | p. 122 |
| Wieland the Smith | p. 127 |
| The Rehabilitation of Cads | p. 131 |
| The Alibi Ring: Oxytocin | p. 133 |
| 6 Pregnant Riddles and Clever Wives | p. 137 |
| The Man Who Wouldn't Sleep with His Wife Until She Had Borne Him a Son | p. 137 |
| Muladeva and the Brahmin's Daughter | p. 139 |
| Other Indian Variants | p. 145 |
| Tamar and Judah | p. 152 |
| The Clever Wife in the Decameron | p. 155 |
| Shakespeare's Rings III: The Riddle of the Ring | p. 159 |
| Is All Well That Ends Well? | p. 165 |
| 7 The Rape of the Clever Wife | p. 170 |
| Rape and Rejection | p. 170 |
| Menander and Terence | p. 172 |
| The Dream Ring | p. 182 |
| How Budur Almost Raped Her Husband Qamar | p. 184 |
| The Vizier's Daughter | p. 193 |
| Parental Imprinting and Uncertain Fathers | p. 200 |
| 8 The Affair of the Diamond Necklace | p. 206 |
| Marie Antoinette and the Scene in the Bower | p. 206 |
| The Official Trial | p. 211 |
| Trial by Libel | p. 212 |
| Alexandre Dumas | p. 215 |
| Fact and Fiction | p. 219 |
| Beaumarchais and The Marriage of Figaro | p. 221 |
| The Ghosts of Versailles | p. 224 |
| Asimov's Norby and the Queen's Necklace | p. 225 |
| 9 The Slut Assumption in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries | p. 228 |
| Chains in Mansfield Park | p. 229 |
| Jewry and Jewelry in Daniel Deronda | p. 230 |
| Guy de Maupassant and Henry James | p. 234 |
| W. Somerset Maugham and China Seas | p. 237 |
| Twentieth-Century Films | p. 242 |
| Real Jewelry and False Women | p. 253 |
| 10 Are Diamonds a Woman's Best Friend? | p. 258 |
| The Symbolic Baggage of Baguettes | p. 258 |
| Who Said, "Forever"? Anita Loos, Leo Robin, De Beers, and N. W. Ayer | p. 262 |
| The Divorce Ring and the Apology Ring | p. 271 |
| The Anti-Myth: Diabolical Diamonds | p. 274 |
| Take Back Your Ring: The Legal View | p. 279 |
| Hard Values | p. 285 |
| The Rebellion of Twenty-First-Century Women | p. 288 |
| The Ties That Bind | p. 292 |
| 11 Two Conclusions, on Money and Myth | p. 294 |
| I Money: The Lap of Luxury | p. 294 |
| Il Myth: Recognition, Rings, Reason and Rationality | p. 298 |
| The Ring to the Rescue | p. 306 |
| Sexing Texts | p. 306 |
| Reason and Rationality | p. 308 |
| The Ring Runs Rings around Reason | p. 309 |
| Notes | p. 317 |
| Bibliography | p. 361 |
| Index | p. 379 |