R. Akiva's daughter: The one who conquered a snake on her wedding night
She was forecast in the stars to die of a snakebite on her wedding night, but changed her fate when, during her wedding, she looked after a beggar who everyone else ignored. that night she stabbed a snake with her brooch.
There is something fatally threatening to this woman on her wedding night, now a married woman she could lose her identity. But she was still able to see the world in her way, starkly different to everyone else around her, and was not precious about her dowry, the tokens of marriage. She gave them away. There are sexual overtones of her pricking the snake with her brooch. It is she who fatally penetrates, she has conquered the snake.
(Shabbat 156b)
There is something fatally threatening to this woman on her wedding night, now a married woman she could lose her identity. But she was still able to see the world in her way, starkly different to everyone else around her, and was not precious about her dowry, the tokens of marriage. She gave them away. There are sexual overtones of her pricking the snake with her brooch. It is she who fatally penetrates, she has conquered the snake.
(Shabbat 156b)