SOURCE: Sokoloff, Naomi B. “Expressing and Repressing the Female Voice in S. Y. Agnon's In the Prime of Her Life.” In Women of the Word: Jewish Women and Jewish Writing, edited by Judith R. Baskin, pp. 216-35. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Sokoloff applies a feminist critique to an Agnon novella, which she says associates the tradition and uncertain future of the Hebrew language with its repressed and unfulfilled female characters.

While the last fifteen years have witnessed an upsurge of interest in feminist critical thought and literary interpretation, few attempts have been made to explore the implications of gender as a thematic concern in modern Hebrew texts.¹ Yet Hebrew warrants special feminist examination because of its exceptional history as a holy tongue that for many centuries was studied almost exclusively by men. It was only the major cultural upheavals and transformations of the...