Putting on Sarah’s Skin: Victim Identity in the Abrahamic Stories and Beyond

1.1 Sarah, the Silent Victim

Sarah’s childlessness and eventual motherhood make her both victim and perpetrator in the Abrahamic stories, and both states are naturally linked to the role of a woman in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East.^[21] Some would say that the role of the mother has not changed so dramatically and that motherhood, and the gestation processes connected to it, make women more likely than men to suffer victimhood, even today.^[22] As a foremother, Sarah struggled for many years to conceive and bear a child. We should not forget, however, that this story is not about Sarah. She plays a role in a narrative that showcases an omnipotent God who has a plan for God’s people. Sarah serves to demonstrate this omnipotence: for the Lord God Almighty, anything is possible – the blind can see, the mute can speak, and the infertile can conceive. In the Hebrew Bible, there are no sterile men, only infertile women, who seemingly impede God’s plans for both God’s people and humanity as a whole. Sarah’s ability to bear a child at her advanced age proves God’s power. Later, however, this same God demands her son back in the well-known story of the Akedah in Genesis 22, when God asks that Isaac be sacrificed to God as a whole burnt offering. Importantly, God asks Abraham for Isaac’s life but does not seek Sarah’s consent. She has no authority to decide for Isaac. Sarah was blamed for not being able to bear a son, but once he is born, she is no longer responsible. The midrashim and various novels have speculated regarding Sarah’s love for Isaac and her dispute with Abraham,^[23] but in the biblical text of Genesis 22, no one asks Sarah what she thinks about the sacrifice. Instead, God asks Abraham. The reaction from Sarah’s husband is puzzling, however. Rather than negotiate with God, as he does on the occasions we noted above, this time Abraham is silent.^[24] Instead, he simply rises early in the morning, prepares for the journey, and sets out to kill his son, his heir, the fulfilment of God’s promises (Gen 22:3). In this respect, Sarah appears to be an instrument in God’s “test” of Abraham’s trust and obedience. Sarah is a mute victim: she is both literally and literarily non-existent, superfluous, undesired: she is entirely absent from the narrative in Genesis chapter 22,^[25] perhaps because her emotions could have complicated the smooth operation of a divine scenario that Abraham chose not to complicate. But if in the biblical text, Sarah is merely a sideshow, here, in this article, she will be the main event.

1.2 Sarah, the Loud Perpetrator

A very different Sarah appears in chapters 16 and 21, where she becomes highly active in seeking to secure a child for herself, a course of action that exposes her to victimhood. First, in Genesis 16:2, she sends her husband to sleep with her servant Hagar: “You see that the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go into my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” (This formulation is far from suggesting any formal arrangement of surrogacy and adoption in the sense of the Laws of Hammurabi.)^[26] And Abraham obliged. He did not protest, or question Sarah’s decision, or do anything to prevent the development of Sarah’s plan. He acted, in fact, just like Sarah when Abraham passed her off as his sister. In verse 16:3, Sarah is very much the mover of things: “Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife.” One verse later, we read that very shortly after she conceived, even before she had given birth, Hagar “looked with contempt on her mistress.” Hagar despised, mocked, and humiliated Sarah, who had orchestrated the entire situation. That’s what the biblical author-redactor wants us to believe. However, we don’t know exactly what Hagar did. Pamela Reis argues that the Hebrew phrasing 16:4d ותקל גברתה בעיניה׃ suggests that Sarah became “light/insignificant” in Hagar’s eyes and that the NRSV translation “she looked with contempt” along with variations in other English versions, is intensified by the subsequent verse 16:5.^[27] This verse reads: “Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!’” The term חמס employed in this verse – encompassing meanings of evil, outrage, and robbery, with both sexual and legal implications – has led scholars like Reis and Bellis^[28] to propose that Abraham’s sexual relations with Hagar continued beyond conception.^[29] It is, therefore, not at all surprising that Sarah did not tolerate Hagar’s behaviour and immediately wanted Hagar gone. Interestingly, she reproaches Abraham as if he had done something other than that which she had specifically commanded, Reis offers another explanation. She suggests that the feminine suffix of “you” in 16:5f, “May the LORD judge between you and me” (ישׁפט יהוה ביני וביניך׃) clearly indicates that not only had the sexual relationship between Hagar and Abraham continued, but that Sarah caught Abraham and Hagar engaged in sexual activity. While the first part of Sarah’s statement was directed at Abraham, the final part was aimed at Hagar, who was personally present and Sarah was calling for the LORD to judge between her and Hagar, not between her and Abraham.^[30] Sarah is Hagar’s mistress, and she should have been able to deal with her directly, but it appears that although Hagar was in Sarah’s authority before she conceived, once she was carrying a child, her destiny was in the hands of Abraham.^[31] This situation seems to foreshadow Sarah’s own situation when it comes to her son, Isaac. Sarah is responsible for the son she cannot conceive, but once he arrives, no one asks her opinion when he is about to be sacrificed. Here with Hagar, however, Sarah is quite adamant: she wants her justice, no one will look down on her ever again, and no one will laugh at her. To press her claim, she asks God to judge between her and Abraham, or (maybe more logically) between her and Hagar. As is typical in his dealings with Sarah, Abraham simply tells her to handle Hagar as she sees fit. Sarah “handled her” in such a way that Hagar chose to run away.

A similar situation occurs in Genesis 21 when on God’s command Hagar returns. When Sarah conceives and gives birth to Isaac, she perceives a threat from Ishmael, her surrogate son: she is jealous on account of her own son and urges Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away again. English translations of Genesis 21:9 disagree on the use of the Hebrew participle מצחק. The NIV reads: “But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking.” The NRSV reads “was playing,” we could say also was “playing with.” The Hebrew text ותרא שׂרה את בן הגר המצרית אשׁר ילדה לאברהם מצחק is far from clear in this respect. The participle מצחק could mean both laughing or mocking, smiling with or at. Scholars also do not speak in one voice.^[32] Okoye refrains from settling on a specific interpretation of the word and instead suggests using the Hebrew word: Ishmael was “Isaacing.” This could mean anything from a harmless act, such as playing or smiling with Isaac, to something more harmful, like mocking or laughing at him. What Sarah saw was Ishmael “Isaacing” – playing Isaac, in other words, substituting him, and this is what provoked her anger and what she could not bear.^[33] Erich Gruen suggests that the laughter with which Sarah reacted to the news of her conception, which gave her first and only child his name and served as a pretext for the expulsion of her rival Hagar and Hagar’s son, was always a sign of Sarah’s “dark character.” Gruen observes: “Sarah once more is the darker figure in this tale. She was quick to take offense, even on trivial grounds, and insisted on drastic, unmerited, measures.”^[34] Was Sarah too quick and harsh? Was Ishmael just playing or smiling with his little brother? Or was she right? Was he “substituting” Isaac? Was Hagar substituting her in Gen 16:5? These questions are clearly interconnected but will remain hanging in the air. The expulsion of Hagar clearly restores Sarah’s agency. However, feminist scholars who emphasise and elevate Sarah’s role in the Hebrew national narratives, such as Ilana Pardes or Dvora Lederman Daniely, either mention Hagar’s affliction without the reference to Sarah (as per Pardes)^[35] or do not mention Hagar at all (as per Lederman Daniely).^[36] The expulsion is, however, the key topic for biblical womanism^[37] and postcolonial feminism,^[38] where it is seen as a mark of patriarchy personified by the better-situated woman who is showing her dominance over the “lowly” slave girl, Hagar. While the feminist scholarship has increasingly focused on Sarah as either victim^[39] or the heroine of the nation yet to be born,^[40] it often overlooks the experiences of culturally and socio-economically marginalized women, such as the poor, the sick, or immigrants, who may identify more with the abused, mistreated, and ultimately expelled Hagar. The womanist and postcolonial debate has increasingly focused on the matter of race, to the same degree, perhaps, as the fundamentalist views from colonial times, where Sarah, despite her Semitic origin, was cast in the role of a cultured “white Victorian lady,” in contrast to Hagar, the Egyptian, who was portrayed as a black representative of a barbaric, animistic society.^[41] The application of racial analysis, while invaluable in colonial and post-colonial studies, requires careful contextualization when applied to different historical and cultural settings. The interpretative frameworks developed in post-colonial scholarship, though powerful, may need adaptation when examining texts and contexts outside the colonial experience.^[42] Hagar’s own “blackness” is assumed but never clearly stated and could be attributed to later constructions.^[43] Interestingly, however, her name clearly translates as “fugitive” or “immigrant.” In antiquity, Hagar’s race did not inherently imply a lower status, throughout the centuries, her descent was considered rather oriental than African (meaning black African),^[44] but colonial narratives distorted her identity, framing her as someone who needed to be “civilized” through the forceful imposition of the Bible.^[45] Nevertheless, I suggest that the colonial bias and its postcolonial corrections should not be held as universally applicable and that the “colourful” dynamic between the two women should be open to other interpretations.

Bearing in mind the bias of the history of reception of this narrative, but also putting that bias slightly on hold, it is interesting to observe the dynamics between these two women. Sarah, the mistress of the household, needs something from Hagar, her subordinate handmaid, servant, slave. Sarah essentially prostitutes Hagar to her husband, hoping to obtain a child through her – a violent and oppressive act. What she did not expect was the reaction from Hagar. When Hagar conceives and thus fulfils one of the requirements for being taken seriously in a patriarchal society, she turns against her mistress. In response, Sarah retaliates, deciding it is not worth maintaining the relationship with Hagar, even at the cost of losing the child. And so, Hagar flees.

1.3 The Story of Sarah and Hagar as a Lens for the Phenomenon of Cohabiting Women

Sarah and Hagar are rivals. Sarah is higher on the social ladder, but Hagar is the one who is able to conceive. The dynamics between women who share significant life spaces – households, workplaces – is extremely interesting and remains a focus of socio-anthropological studies to this day. In her extensive research on the dynamics between cohabiting women in polygamous households in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa, Janet Seeley arrived at a straightforward conclusion: the relationships between these women evolve and change over time, depending on the context and the needs of the women and their children.^[46] At times, they collaborate in common struggles, such as childcare or caring for one another in times of illness. At other times, they may scheme against each other and compete for the favour of their husband. Seeley observes: “Conflicts had arisen over competition for a husband’s affection and resources … Cooperation between co-wives sometimes developed into intimacy and trust. Ayisa [the third and youngest wife in a shared household with multiple women, one husband, and their children] experienced this in her marriage where she was cared for by her older co-wives like a daughter.”^[47] The dynamics between Sarah and Hagar can to some extent be viewed in a similar light. It is also no coincidence that the figures of Sarah and Hagar, and their cohabitation, hold a firm place in contemporary contextual approaches to the Hebrew Bible in Africa.^[48] Instances of cooperation between Sarah and Hagar are not documented by the biblical author, but their rivalry is captured in chapters 16 and 21 and is discussed by various authors.^[49] It is a rich debate, but an exceedingly challenging one. Reaves, for example, refuses to see the dynamics between Sarah and Hagar as rivalry because rivalry assumes some sort of equality, and claims rather that it is “a story of threat and survival.”^[50] In the light of Reaves’s article, we might add “for Hagar,” but in the light of the intellectual enterprise here, we might also add “and for Sarah.” Current developments in postcolonial studies compel white women to confess their “sinful whiteness” and to see themselves “personally responsible” for our naïve recognition of Sarah as a victim of patriarchy rather than seeing her as the persecutor of Hagar, the black slave. I see this as an unnecessary dichotomy that projects an overly coloured dynamic viewed through a lens that sees only black and white.^[51] Although the Bible does not recount instances of cooperation between Sarah and Hagar, studies from social anthropology seem closer to the everyday reality of co-habiting women than are purely synchronic literary analyses of the text.^[52] Moreover, although Reaves shows some sympathy for Sarah when she is despised by Hagar, she considers this merely a pitiful event and draws back from blaming Hagar for her conduct.^[53] Such an interpretation presents “sinful whiteness” as an ontological given and Frantz Fanon’s “violence restores agency”^[54] as a legitimate apology for anything Hagar did (or might have done) to her mistress. One could, on the contrary, argue that Hagar’s aggression towards Sarah demonstrates that regardless of race, gender, or class, whoever has the upper hand will tend to misuse power against their subordinates. Such a dynamic undermines rather than empowers them. By exercising this aggressive will to power – typically associated with toxic masculinity – they unwittingly reinforce the patriarchal hierarchy. The figures of Sarah and Hagar and the stories in Genesis 16 and 21 offer a rich illustration of womanist approaches that strive for recognition and liberation from their white Euro-American “older sister.” Hagar, the Egyptian slave, serves as a powerful example for womanists, the queer or LGBTQ+ who feel unrepresented by mainstream feminism. Sarah and Hagar thus highlight not only the relationship between white middle-class women and marginalized women but also between white middle-class feminism and marginalized feminism (i.e. womanism, queer, LGBTQ+). And in both these roles – whether representing individual women or whole disciplines – the two women illustrate the malign power of patriarchy which is maintained by their struggle against one another. Interestingly, they also demonstrate that this patriarchal power cannot be assigned to any particular identity.

The dynamics outlined above are explored in the feminist discourse on intersectionality, which examines the layers of oppression that affect different social groups, and which developed in the context of African-American women.^[55] Two of the prominent social categories analysed through an intersectional lens are race and gender. In the case of Sarah and Hagar, intersectionality can be linked to the contributing factors of race and slavery, whereby the former is indeed a later construction. The frequent invocation of the relationship between these two women by various sub-fields of feminist criticism suggests that racism and slavery are part of a broader phenomenon rooted in the victim identity of those striving to escape oppression.

Therefore, when we consider “putting on Sarah’s skin,” we must recognize the layered complexities of Sarah’s story. She is not merely a passive figure in a patriarchal narrative. She is also an active participant in the oppression of others. Understanding her dual role helps us better comprehend the intricate dynamics of power, victimhood, and agency within feminist biblical criticism and beyond. We are putting ourselves in the shoes of a woman who although a literary character has influenced the fates of real women across history until today, who has been manipulated and misused by divine and earthly powers alike, and who embodies both the pain of exploitation and the hope of a promise fulfilled. Sarah helps us to explore the themes of faith, sacrifice, and the enduring struggle for identity and dignity in the face of overwhelming odds.

1.4 The Ambiguous Victimhood of Sarah

Sarah symbolizes the complex nature of female victimhood, which manifests in two distinct ways. On the one hand, she submits to Abraham; on the other, her reaction towards Hagar is active aggressive. This duality reflects a broader pattern observed in people who suffer from long-term oppression – whether men, women, or others (though my focus is on women). Such people tend to react submissively towards their perceived superiors and oppressively towards those they see as their subordinates. The psychoanalyst and linguist Julia Kristeva shares René Girard’s well-known view that humanity is trapped in a cycle of violence, often creating a sacrificial scapegoat^[56] recruited predominantly from among women because of their radical otherness.^[57]

Drawing on psychoanalysis and the philosophy of language, Kristeva offers a nuanced interpretation of feminine otherness which sets women out as primary victims.^[58] She argues that women’s gestation processes expose them to a hostile world, a world, Kristeva argues, that is structured in such a way as to accommodate the male rather than the female being in the world, a state of affairs that can be seen in both the struggles associated with childbirth (psychoanalytical ground) and the prevailing rigid symbolic (linguistic) structure.^[59] Women, according to Kristeva, desire a fictitious woman who unlike them suffers no castration (which usually results from gestation processes and subsequent abjection by the child) and who does not require a man in order to conceive.^[60] Based on this observation, Kristeva suggests that society’s deep sense of indebtedness to the woman-mother – especially among marginalized groups like women – often leads to extreme reactions: “[This] eternal debt to the woman-mother … makes a woman more vulnerable within the symbolic order, more fragile when she suffers within it, and more aggressive when she defends herself from it.”^[61] Thus, women in positions of power adopt a harsher approach, while those facing oppression tend to sacrifice themselves. This important observation deconstructs gender stereotypes by attributing oppression and the patriarchal misuse of power to anyone in power, whether they be men or women. Kristeva does not want women to give up their feminine identity and distinctiveness and insists that women are victims of what she calls the “founding sacrifice.” To heal the damage of the founding sacrifice, we must challenge the myth of the archaic mother, in other words, challenge patriarchy.^[62]

Borrowing the foremother Sarah and her twofold victim identity, we may say that we are “in Sarah’s skin” when we feel we are victims of the patriarchal power structures that make us aggressive and violent in our attempts to defend ourselves and maintain our position in society. Such a phenomenon appears among groups that are typically considered “oppressed” and are expected to express solidarity with one another, for example women. This was, after all, the purpose of the first feminist movements – to unite in the struggle for liberation from oppressive patriarchy. It appears, however, that violence among subalterns is more prevalent than is the collective effort to create unity in the struggle towards a common goal, such as liberation. According to Fanon’s claim, noted above, that “violence restores agency,” power games compel us to commit violence against those who are, or who at least appear to be, our subordinates. However, as Girard argues, violence begets violence and tends to return in cycles.^[63] This simple truth was experienced first hand (or “in his own skin”) by Fanon during the Algerian Civil War when the native Algerians he initially supported turned against him. It was a grim reminder of the well-known adage from the French Revolution: “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its own children.” Thus, rather than giving someone a taste of their own medicine in order to restore one’s agency, a better way out of the cycle of violence may be to fight patriarchal power structures.

1.5 Sarah and Hagar, Aunt Lydia and Janine: Patriarchy in the Hands of Women

I will devote the remainder of the article to some illustrations from the novels of the feminist author Margaret Atwood. Drawing on Atwood’s work as a literary example seems particularly appropriate given her Episcopalian background and the rich tapestry of biblical allusions, both explicit and implicit, that characterize her novels. Atwood touches upon the theme of sacrifice and victimhood^[64] (especially the victimhood of women^[65] and different levels of oppression among women) in many of her novels.^[66] However, her diptych The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and The Testaments (2019) could be said to offer the clearest illustration of both the abuse of power by women on the one hand and their total submission on the other, both of which come as a reaction to long-term oppression. The setting for Atwood’s dystopian novels is the theocratic state of Gilead on the territory of the former USA, which has been destroyed in a civil war. Gilead is run according to a rigid patriarchal system where women are subordinate to men. The state has a very firm structure and hierarchy with assigned roles and clear competencies that may not be overstepped. The names for these roles are taken from the Bible and refer to specific missions fulfilled by their biblical representatives. Space does not allow a detailed description of the state of Gilead, but two of those roles are important for this illustration. Starting at the bottom of the hierarchy, a handmaid (a word also used in the Abrahamic stories to describe Hagar) was a woman assigned to an infertile married couple to serve as a surrogate mother.^[67] A handmaid was typically recruited from among women who did not conform to Gilead’s “high” moral standards but had proven their ability to bear children. She might have been a single mother, a divorced woman or the wife (partner) of a divorced man, or a woman who had had an abortion. Secondly, at the top of the women’s hierarchy, the role of aunt was filled by those of the same “moral” profile as handmaids but with two important exceptions: such women had (i) led a successful career in a high managerial/juridical position, and (ii) killed one of their peers during the process of “filtration.”^[68] There has been much discussion, both lay and scholarly, about the role of the “Atwood handmaid,”^[69] often alongside discussion of the controversial abortion laws in Europe and the USA. I will leave this field to others and focus my attention on the dialectic between a handmaid and an aunt as an illustration of Sarah’s “victimhood” and Kristeva’s theory of victim identity, according to which, as we have already noted, those who suffer long-time oppression tend either to self-sacrifice or to sacrifice others.

While set in a dystopian future America, Atwood’s narrative echoes the patriarchal systems evident in the Abrahamic stories of Genesis 12-23, suggesting enduring patterns in how societies structure gender relations and reproductive rights. Because of this similarity of context (and despite the obvious differences in time and space), Atwood’s novels offer us a unique opportunity to compare observations of the double victimhood of Sarah in the Abrahamic stories with their conceptualization in the psychoanalytical and linguistic philosophy of Julia Kristeva. I refer here to Kristeva’s theory, just noted, that long-term oppression and victimization lead either to self-sacrifice or to sacrificing others. Kristeva writes about the oppressive, patriarchal (although ostensibly equal or even feminist), class-based (although ostensibly classless) context of the Soviet Union, a society where non-stop surveillance by the state (the secret police, the KGB), or even by one’s neighbours, friends, or family members, was the norm. Women who managed to break through the myriad constraints, Kristeva suggests, tended to become aggressive (“viral”) and oppressive towards others.^[70] Although these women were in high positions in the public sphere (politics, academia), the reason for their behaviour was the same as for those who totally submitted to the system and participated in their own oppression, in short, gendered oppression. In one of her interviews, Atwood confesses that the context of Gilead, with its omnipresent fear and surveillance of everyone by everyone, was influenced by her travels to socialist Eastern Europe which she made during her stay in Berlin.^[71] From Atwood’s novels The Testaments and The Handmaid’s Tale, I put forward the figures of Lydia, an aunt, and Janine, a handmaid, and give an example of the fates of these two women alongside the biblical Sarah and Hagar. Here, I apply the criteria of intersectionality, that is, of multiple identities and various layers of oppression; however, for reasons mentioned above, I do not see the major divide in terms of race and class because they correspond neither to the biblical context nor to Atwood’s dystopian contexts. The humiliation of handmaids is rooted in various factors, not in race or class, and is primarily inflicted by other women – especially aunts, but also by wives, who despise the handmaids precisely because they rely on them to produce children.^[72] The so-called “marthas,” older women with clear moral profiles but unable to bear children, serve as housekeepers and contribute to the handmaids’ marginalization.^[73] Even handmaids themselves partake in this cycle of humiliation once they succeed in their “mission” to conceive.^[74] Atwood concludes: “Yes, they [women] will gladly take positions of power over other women… in systems in which women as a whole have scant power.”^[75] This may be understood as an echo of Kristeva’s theory presented above. Pilar Somacarrera skilfully captures the nature of the aunts, who are both “tyrannical and maternal” figures. Through their surveillance over all women – including wives and “marthas” – they help to sustain the patriarchal structure.^[76] Aunt Lydia’s transformation into a “monster” and her abuse of power are detailed in her “testament,” titled The Ardua Hall Holograph, intricately woven into The Testaments. She was tortured herself by the leaders of Gilead, the commanders – both mentally and physically – and, like all the other aunts, she also committed murder.^[77] She was simultaneously as both victim and perpetrator. While some of the women refused the murderous initiation that would have made them aunts, they ultimately became victims themselves.^[78] Though they paid with their lives, they maintained their moral integrity by refusing to participate in the creation and perpetuation of this dehumanizing system. The handmaid Janine who was repeatedly tortured psychically and physically by the aunts and despised by the handmaids is the example from the other side of the spectrum, lacking any kind of power.^[79] And then again, when she conceived (in echo of the biblical Hagar) looked down on other handmaids.^[80] Unlike the biblical Hagar, however, who is ultimately blessed by God (Gen 16:11) and is the first person ever to name God (Gen 16:13), Janine got ultimately devastated when her child turned out to be unable to survive.^[81]

Lydia and Janine lived in what had been a modern liberal democratic society, one we would recognize in the United States of the latter part of the twentieth century – just, equal, open, or at least almost so – but which after a coup and a civil war had become conservative, patriarchal, class-bound, hostile towards women, and oppressive towards any form of otherness. I suggest that the contexts and paths through which one of these women became an aunt and the other a handmaid are similar. These contexts are framed by (i) two identities they held in common: they were both women who lived in a patriarchal society and were both victimized (they both lived without the protection of an institutionalized marriage and had both had abortions); and (ii) two different identities: aunts enjoyed an elevated position in society but were also, because of their advanced age, infertile; handmaids were working class but fertile (had proved their ability to bear children – either by giving birth outside marriage or by having had an abortion). These identities of aunt and handmaid recall those of Sarah and Hagar but also portray the image of the two Sarahs: Sarah the oppressed and Sarah the oppressor, and the relationship between the two. Postcolonial scholarship, building largely upon studies of intersectionality, emphasizes the role of race, specifically that Hagar, the slave, is “black,” and Sarah, the mistress, is “white.” This interpretation is understandable within postcolonial efforts to put right historical iniquities, but it should not be considered the only hermeneutical key to these particular intersectionalities.