A Tragic Hero’s Ability to Know: What the Devil Represents in When Women Were Birds Gloria Endicott College

Acquiring knowledge remains one of the fundamental purposes of humankind, yet for centuries half of the population have been discouraged and often prohibited from discovering the pleasures and advantages of learning. This idea held women back from reading, philosophizing, and studying the way men were expected to. In Terry Tempest Williams memoir, When Women Were Birds she captures the image of a religious woman’s embrace of the secular world. This paper analyzes and compares the story of Adam and Eve and When Women Were Birds, aiming to prove how to both Eve and Williams’, the Devil represents more than just ‘evil’, specifically focusing on the line “Devil spelled backwards is lived” (Tempest 69). He represents knowledge through experience and ‘sin’, a concept the author often refers back to when she relays her young adult life. The traditional patriarchal practices of religion have perpetuated the idea that women are either Eve or Mary, the virgin or the whore, limiting real women to unrealistic perspectives of themselves and others. The author’s attitude toward religion, experience/sin, feminism, and men illustrate the complexity of the liberation women feel when they find their voice through experiencing life as...