Virgins: A Cultural History

Author: Anke Bernau Format: Paperback Number of Pages: 232 Virgins haunted the medieval imagination; in those days only virgins were thought capable of taming a unicorn. To the most devout young women, virginity was worth dying for. Nuns and saints threatened with rape preferred to mutilate or kill themselves rather than lose their claim to perfection. Later centuries grew more ambivalent about virginity: before marriage it remained praiseworthy, but it was ridiculed and despised as unnatural if preserved for too...Read more