Volume 33, Number 6 · April 10, 1986
Marianne into Battle
By Peter Partner
Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form
by Marina Warner
Atheneum, 417 pp., $25.00
Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture
by Margaret R. Miles
Beacon, 200 pp., $24.95
Marina Warner has written an interesting but discursive book, which shows the great difficulty she had in imposing order on its enormous subject matter. The guiding idea of the book is the use of female figures to stand for other things. Warner's point of departure is the Statue of Liberty, which is a woman standing for freedom; from this she goes on to other monuments, such as the figure of Britannia and the allegorical statues of female figures in the Paris streets. The form of metaphor which these monuments portray is culturally rooted not only in artistic tradition but in language and in myth. So the book deals with very complex subjects. The question that presses on the reader is whether the complexity arises from the nature of the subject, or whether some of it is due to the confused way that Marina Warner approaches it.
Review, 3681 words
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