Then, she says, the story takes a turn: “But whenever land was procured, when trade became a way of bettering yourself, when couples were divided in their efforts, equity was lost. And slowly but inevitably the idea of power over others evolved, and centuries passed. Women were no longer equal partners in life but were subject to laws that, in some places, reduced them to little more than slaves.”
Gilden was born in Chico, attended public school in Willows, and in 1959, when she graduated from high school, enrolled at Chico State. Though a music major, she found she was more interested in travel and writing. She and husband Ray lived in France, Turkey, and Oregon (where she now resides) during their 53 years of marriage. He was a feminist before the word became popular, “a kind, intelligent, courageous man who spent much of his time in determined activism” before he passed away in 2018.
Gilden combines historical vignettes throughout the ages with a memoir of awakening to feminism in “Eve And Me: The Shadow That Spans 3000 Years” ($18.50 in paperback from Artha One Publishing). The shadow is what she calls “the mythology of Eve,” who, beguiled by the serpent in Genesis, must come under male authority. “Misogyny,” she writes, “has never needed an excuse to stick its ugly snout into women’s business….” Religious and cultural institutions have embedded the “fear and hatred of women.”
She writes of women who have made their own rules, and that gives her hope. “Eve broke the rules and paid the price” but “those cracked and disregarded rules, like broken windows, let in unfiltered light.” In the various waves of feminism in her lifetime, the shadow, here and there, is being dispelled by “light that I believe is waiting for us, but in a future only men and women together can create.”
