Book 2, Goddesses: Chapter 3, Artemis, Athena, Hestia: the Virgin Goddesses Summary and Analysis

Jean Shinoda Bolan focuses on these three goddesses in this chapter. She contrasts them, so that readers can clearly see that their inviolability does not reduce them to being identical or 'nothing but the same' as one another.

Artemis is the first of these. She is task orientated. She is a goddess of the hunt. She just left the city and spent all her time with other women. This in itself occurs whenever women join monastic organizations, but it has also occurred in other ways.

Athena is the next. She is the goddess of wisdom, and the daughter of Zeus but by head birth rather than by sexual birth. She is often amongst the best of them despite the gender difference. Subtly there may be...