著者

春日井 真英

出版者

東海学園大学

雑誌

研究紀要 (ISSN:13421514)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.4, pp.151-170, 1999-03-31

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It is said that there was a woman, who was named Lilith, before Eve appears in the Old Testament. This first woman was built from dust by the God at the same time as Adam was built. The woman was supposed to be Adam's nice partner, but Lilith ignored the order of the God, and she left the place, where the God prepared for them to stay. So the God had to make Adam's new partner Eve, this time from Adam's rib. One of the characteristics of Lilith was her fertility, it is said that she had many children (demons), but by refusing the order of the God to return and stay with Adam, she had to lost a hundred children in each day by the punishment of the God. And she vowed to inflict harm on infants of men. We can say that Lilith's fertility is one of the charateristics of the Great-mother, or Terra-mater, at the same time she is known as a child slayer and destroyer, on the other hand she is a catering mother to children. It is easy to illustrate her characters, but an important point is that her activities were all based on her free wish, independent to the God, also independent to man. Lilith was independent, fertile and at the same time she was a terrible mother. But this fearful character was not only Lilith's. We find the same natures in the story of Harity ([鬼子母神]Woman, who appears in the Buddhist legends) and Japanese Goddess lzanami [イザナミ]. I believe that Lilith's behavioral patterns are very important factors to think about contempolary women in this age of feminism. From this perspective, I try to extract and describe the woman figures of these days, using the poems, mainly of Miyuki Nakajima [中島みゆき]. And from her poems I come to conclude that the natures of women are not changed since Lilith or other goddesses were described. Not only contempolar women possess the same characters but these are, may be I can say, unaltered and would be reserved by the women from long long ago. If they lost or changed this Lilithness, then women would be not women at that time.