Female Embodiment and the Ascetic Impulse

Across centuries, the female body has been shaped by theological and cultural narratives that cast it as both divine creation and site of moral and social anxiety. This book offers a critical re-reading of those traditions, arguing that an enduring ‘ascetic impulse’ has profoundly structured how female embodiment is understood and experienced—from the early Church to contemporary forms of self-discipline. Drawing on sources from the patristic period to feminist and queer theologies, it traces a theological genealogy of the female body that challenges inherited binaries of purity and sexuality, agency and submission. Bringing historical and theological texts into conversation with phenomenology and current debates on gender identity and medicalisation, the study reconsiders how the female body has been interpreted, disciplined, and sacralised within Christian thought—and what possibilities this opens for rethinking embodiment in contemporary ethical and cultural debates.