Susanna's Story Reviewed, Relived, and Revised: Images of Sexual Harassment

This study presents over one hundred images related to the apocryphal tale of Susanna and the Elders. Works from the Renaissance to the present are organized to demonstrate that the heroine, seen from divergent perspectives by artists and art historians, was a classic victim of sexual harassment. A significant contribution to Art History and Women's Studies is made by a multilevel approach to the theme of Susanna's story, based on iconography, semiotics, and Jungian archetypes. Presented as a visual essay, it documents the predicament of a typical harassment victim. Historic perceptions help determine Susanna's disparate roles, representative of the feminine in male-dominated societies. Images and insights from the field of Art History are combined with other creative versions of the folk tale to clarify and help illuminate the complexities of sexual harassment, generally portrayed as a sociological and psychological issue. Susanna's story and image are reviewed in the works of Old Masters, the poetry and prose of women as well as men, and in the work of Artemisia Gentileschi, a seventeenth century teenager who was raped by her art teacher. Twentieth century revisions of Susanna's story complete the visual essay, which concludes with a personal interpretation of Susanna's images arranged as a heroine's journey of transformation. The study explains that the author, Suzanne Teate, as a student, relived aspects of Susanna's story of sexual harassment. Like Susanna and Artemisia Gentileschi, she endured the revictimizing ordeal of a legal confrontation. A strong connection is made between the fictional Susanna experience and the factual personal ones. The main goals are to raise levels of awareness and validate the struggles of sexual harassment victims. The study ends with a promise of hope for victims: that transformation from vulnerability and innocence to assured experience is possible.