'I gave birth but did not bring a child to life': for millenia, women expressed their pain through a belief in demonic, female monsters
Sarah Clegg’s Woman’s Lore: 4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi is about ancient demonic figures, expressly the infamous child-killing monsters of the Near East and Mediterranean. Intimately tied to childbirth and infant and child mortality, such monsters were female in form.
The Conversation ·