The Women's First Speech

The Women’s First Speech

The woman expresses her desire and explores her feelings for her lover, and his for her, through stories in which she and he both play roles, as themselves or in fantasy guises. Here she tells three. In her first story (2:8–17), she conjures her lover up by bringing him closer and closer from afar until he is peering through the windows of her house. In a conventional picture of courtship, the man, whose freedom of movement and social autonomy are underscored by the comparison to a gazelle bounding over the mountains, comes calling on the woman, who is inside the house…