Description Marina Warner explores the tradition of personifying liberty, justice, wisdom, charity, and other ideals and desiderata in the female form, and examines the tension between women's historic and symbolic roles. Drawing on the evidence of public art, especially sculpture, and painting, poetry, and classical mythology, she ranges over the allegorical presence of the woman in the Western tradition with a sharply observant eye and a piquant and engaging style. About the author Among Marina Warner 's books are From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (1995), Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (1983), and Joan of Arc (California, 1999).