ABSTRACT
Many feminist theorists have insisted not only that woman has been constructed as man's other, but in addition that this is the master construction on the basis of which all other self-other formulations have been built. This chapter illustrates three related aspects of this construction so that we may better see the processes by which woman as other has been constructed so that she is serviceable to man: woman as the absent presence; the male gaze and standpoint as the implicit standard and universal point of view; the unheard voice of woman's own specificity. The depiction of woman in the Judeo-Christian Bible offers a further early illustration of woman's absent presence in the hands of men. Although the term male gaze is not original to the work of J.G. Morawski and R.S. Steele, the concept captures the sense of their argument and directs us to a second aspect of woman constructed as man's other.
