Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue -- The Mother of All Sciences -- Creation and Procreation -- Collecting and Questioning -- Proverbs and Their Impact -- Legacies -- Media -- Features -- Changing Contexts, Constant Cores -- 1 The Female Body -- From Head to Foot -- Body and Soul -- Stature and Appearance -- Head and Neck -- Brains -- Eyes -- Nose and Ears -- Lips, Mouth, Teeth, Tongue -- Shoulders and Arms -- Hands and Fingers -- Sex Characteristics -- Nursing Breasts and Breasts as Objects of Desire -- Womb -- Vagina -- Buttocks -- Legs, Knees, Feet -- Beauty and Beautifying -- Radiance -- The Impact of Female Attraction -- Belles -- Beauty versus Intelligence -- Transience -- Outer Beauty and Inner Qualities -- Ugliness -- Fatal Allurements -- 2 Phases of Life -- Girls, Daughters, Brides -- A Boy or a Girl? -- Bride Wealth and Dowry -- Virginity and Virtue -- Spinsters -- Wedding Day -- Wedlock -- Wives, Co-wives, Widows -- Wives -- Good or Bad? -- The 'Good' Wife -- Wickedness' -- Co-Wives -- Why an Extra Wife? -- Hierarchies Among Wives -- Problems and Disillusions -- Widows -- Death of Wife, Death of Husband -- Loss and Sorrow -- Widows' Tears -- Slander -- Remarrying -- Mothers and Mothers-in-law -- Mothers -- Uniqueness -- Ideal Children and Worrying Mothers -- Mothers and Children, Mothers and Sons -- Mothers and Daughters -- Who Is Taking Care of the Mother? -- Motherless -- Mothers-in-Law versus Daughters-in-Law -- Rivals -- Newly Arrived -- Revenge -- Death and the Mother-in-Law -- Old Age -- Grandmothers and Old Women -- Good Old Age -- Bad Old Age -- Old Age Behaviour -- Decrepitude and Death -- Status and Authority -- 3 Basics of Life -- Love -- Falling in Love -- The Logic of Love -- Love in Marriage -- Love and Other Men's Wives -- Bitter Worries and Sweet Words -- Sex -- Private Parts -- Desire -- Pleasure.

The First Time and Next -- Heavenly Delight -- Fertility, Pregnancy, Childbirth -- Sterility -- Fertility -- Pregnancy -- Childbirth and Childbed -- 4 Female Power -- Verbal Talent -- An Inborn Quality? -- The Jewel of Silence -- Work -- 'Woman's Work' -- Cookery -- Cleaning -- Crafts -- Never-Ending Hard Work -- What to Do Without a Wife? -- Knowledge -- For Men Only -- Women's Advice -- Cunning' versus 'Knowledge' -- From Healing to Poisoning -- Witchcraft and Other Occult Forces -- Female Witches -- Devil and Satan -- Countermeasures -- Moulding a Wife -- Do Not Praise and Do Not Trust -- Not to Be Seen and Not to Be Heard -- Violence -- Wife Beating -- Husband Beating -- Anyone Against? -- Women's Reactions -- 5 Messages of Metaphors -- Women as Objects -- Containers -- Flowers, Trees, Fruits -- Women as Animals -- Women as Eatables -- Gendered Places and Spaces -- Home and the World -- Here and Hereafter -- Images in Search of Hierarchies -- Epilogue: Proverbial Imagination in an Age of Globalization -- Endnotes -- Languages, Cultures and Countries -- Bibliography -- Index.