Stealing Lot’s Wife and Daughters From the Bible: A Response to Rozmarin’s “Staying Alive”

This article is a response to Rozmarin’s re-reading of the biblical story of Lot’s wife in her article “Staying Alive” (this issue). I begin by filling out the intellectual background to and rationale for Rozmarin’s project, which is to re-interpret this story as offering an alternative to the Western cultural law of matricide. I consider some further alternative meanings contained in the figures of Lot’s wife and daughters inspired by but not wholly in agreement with Rozmarin. I conclude by returning to broader questions about the feminist project of stealing female figures from texts of the patriarchal tradition.