The Ring of Truth: And Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry
Wendy Doniger
Abstract
Why are sex and jewelry so often connected? What does an anxiety about the authenticity of fake jewelry have to do with the authenticity of fake women, which is to say untrue, unfaithful, promiscuous women? Are diamonds a girl’s best friend? Or, rather, what kind of a girl-or storyteller-thinks diamonds are her best friend? Jewelry is money, often the only property a woman could own; yet rings also symbolize fidelity, legitimacy, and love. In the old myths, men accuse women of unchastity, but the man’s ring proves that he was the one who was unchaste; the ring also validates the woman’s child ... More
Why are sex and jewelry so often connected? What does an anxiety about the authenticity of fake jewelry have to do with the authenticity of fake women, which is to say untrue, unfaithful, promiscuous women? Are diamonds a girl’s best friend? Or, rather, what kind of a girl-or storyteller-thinks diamonds are her best friend? Jewelry is money, often the only property a woman could own; yet rings also symbolize fidelity, legitimacy, and love. In the old myths, men accuse women of unchastity, but the man’s ring proves that he was the one who was unchaste; the ring also validates the woman’s child as the true heir, assuaging the man’s uncertainty about his child’s paternity. But in modern stories of necklaces, real jewelry proves that the woman was false. What do persistent tales of rings found in fish, or rings that destroy memory, tell us about our own irrational weakness for stories that flaunt our own logic? The cross-cultural distribution of the mythology of sexual rings is impressive-from ancient India and Greece through the Arab world to Shakespeare, Marie Antoinette, Wagner, nineteenth-century novels, Hollywood, “Heartbalm” laws, and the De Beers advertising campaign. It shows us how widespread is the desire to project the responsibility for sexual rejection or betrayal onto an external force like a gold ring.
Keywords:
jewelry,
ring,
myth,
sex,
love,
paternity,
in/fidelity,
diamonds
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190267117 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190267117.001.0001 |
