I just had to say that, ok? This is an interesting analysis, and tangentially Project-relevant with its focus on a female household, but there were a few odd clunkers in the author's reasoning. It felt a bit like the author is too focused on questions of literary symbolism and not quite familiar enough with gendered aspects of material and social culture. The one example I'll give is when she interprets a scene where a woman is spinning thread as part of a magical ritual as representing appropriation of male power via the subversion of a "phallic" spindle and production of "ejaculatory thread." Yes, the phrase "ejaculatory thread" appears in print there. For anyone familiar with the overwhelming power of the spindle as a female symbol, and indeed one so strongly bound to the female sphere that the favorite way of depicting an emasculated man was to show him using a spindle...well, let's just say it seemed like an unlikely interpretation.
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