Was Mary a Template for Today's Feminism?

Is She a Great Symbol for Women's Power?

For my first blog, I was tempted to write a longer essay, about the bible's great women being implicit feminists, starting with Eve in the garden of Eden. I have this idea that Eve, the first woman, already embodied feminist attitudes -- which God hastened to punish.

But I will write about Eve another time. With all her enormous resonance in culture, Eve is not an official icon. But Mary is the icon, culturally, mystically, liturgically. And dare I say it, sexually too?

Yes, because icons have gender, and where there is gender, there is a sexual connotation.

The mother of Jesus became an icon a long time ago, and in many ways her icon is more powerful and haunting inside our psyche than the icon of her famed son.

Everyone knows something about Mary of Nazareth, though what people know, is it really knowledge, cognitively speaking? I'll leave that to the readers; but people do think that they know about Mary of Nazareth. Icons as physical objects are remote and stiff, and yet, the persons they portray are held close inside us – as intimate characters of our imagination. We transfer to Mary, to Jesus, to the apostles, etc, a trove of personal beliefs, emotions and attitudes. We treat them as live people, whom we know, who are like us, who live with us -- even though we could never meet Mary, Joseph, Jesus, or any other iconic heroes, unless we witnessed an apparition.

Inside our psyches, we view the icons as humanized individuals, after whom we model our attitudes.

What kind of Mary of Nazareth do we carry inside us?

There is the belief that Mary was a kindly, most wonderfully maternal woman, that she was pure, and that she was generous, and... obedient. Specifically about "obedient," all of us know something about that happening when the angel appeared to Mary, announcing her that she was chosen to carry a miraculous baby. It was God's plan that she should carry that baby. "Thy will be done," Mary answered God, through the intercession of the angel.

That briefest passage in the gospels was viewed as proof of Mary's unquestioning obedience, and it was used as a social directive for women to be obedient in general, and specifically towards men.

A great writer and feminist, a Frenchwoman, her name is Simone de Beauvoir, wrote that Mary of Nazareth represents the direst case of a woman being submitted to male rule. In the words of Simone de Beauvoir, Mary of Nazareth is the most extreme example of a woman surrendering to a man and to male authority, because she is the one mother in Western history who is kneeling at the feet of her own son.

Beauvoir, author of the feminist classic The Second Sex, was not the first or last author to portray Mary as passive, submissive, and probably the worst possible example of how to assert herself, to billions of women around the world.

Beauvoir saw Mary through her own experience as a little girl: from age seven to age fourteen, Beauvoir was educated in a very rigorous catholic school. That little girl had to kneel every day in prayer, in front of the icon of Christ, as all the other girls in that girls' school. Young and independent-minded, and questioning why she was made to kneel, Beauvoir felt that Mary represented all females forced to kneel in front of a male icon, in a male-dominated church, in a male-dominated world.

Hats off to Beauvoir, she made an important point about how Mary shouldn't be seen.

In fact, the actual Mary of Nazareth was a girl who didn't live to see her son iconized as the official messiah, or herself being turned into the immaculate virgin. Nor was Mary, during her own life, a worshipper of icons – Jewish-born and Jewish-practicing, Mary of Nazareth would have rejected icons as graven images. Jesus himself, a Jewish man and possibly a rabbi, would have disapproved of icons too, including one based on his own image.

Yet why is the notion of Mary being passive and submissive so familiar?

Because that is what church iconology tried to establish.

As she spoke out the famous "Thy will be done," Mary burnished her image as being given a command to which she answered yes.

And yet... is this who Mary is, in the minds of women raised Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant?

I say no. In her real life, the historic Mary was a rebel. And in the minds of women, Mary was always an image of strength. An attentive rereading of the gospels can establish with equal certainness that she was clever, strong-minded, a survivor, a leader, a woman capable to weather hardship, to withhold her dignity in ambiguous and dangerous situations (pregnancy out of wedlock, to quote the most obvious), and to maneuver complex situations, including the announcement by the angel, in her own favor.

She was a super-woman. Against the notion that super-womanhood is defined by kindliness, sweetness, motherliness, gentleness, and other "soft" qualitiesonly, I shall claim that super-womanhood is resilient, un-frightened, hopeful, optimistic, independent-minded, and filled with healthy curiosity. All attributes which we find in the women of today, in their most autonomous stances, in their willingness to do without men rather than be the annex of men, and in their need for motherhood, but not for the bonds of marriage unless that marriage is for equal partners.

It seems to me, it's time that we look at Mary the non-submissive, the strong and daringly questioning, both of God and of the holy writ.

I posit that women always saw Mary as strong and as her own woman, despite "thy will be done." I posit that the gospels themselves, re-read with a free mind, offer evidence of a different Mary, a superwoman encouraging what later was to be called feminism.

Mary was a template for feminism, is my theory.

I hope this a theme that interests women readers, and all readers. I shall come back with proof, from historic events, from art, and from the gospels even.

Petru Popescu

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The author of this essay wrote the historic novel Girl Mary, just published by Simon&Schuster, New York

 

Follow Petru Popescu on Twitter: www.twitter.com/petrupopescu

Comments

[minimalist syntax]

Here is a small part of the hyperbolic hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary written by Romanos the Melodist (6th C. CE). Reading this one sees Mary is seen as a person of incredible spiritual power:

To you as Champion unto victory invincible, Your City offers thanksgiving unto you.
From our trials, Theotokos have you redeemed us, for as you possess invincible might
and power. From all dangers Theotokos deliver us, As we cry unto You Hail O Bride
unwedded.

An Angel of the first rank was sent from heaven to say to the Theotokos: Rejoice! And perceiving You, O Lord, taking bodily form, he stood in awe and with his bodiless voice cried aloud to her as follows:

Rejoice, you through whom joy shall shine forth;
Rejoice, you through whom the curse shall vanish.
Rejoice, fallen Adam's restoration;
Rejoice, redemption of Eve's tears.
Rejoice, height that is too difficult for human thought to ascend;
Rejoice, depth that is too strenuous for Angels' eyes to perceive
Rejoice, for you are the throne of the King;
Rejoice, for you hold him Who sustains everything.
Rejoice, star that shows forth the Sun;
Rejoice, womb in which God became incarnate.
Rejoice, through whom creation is renewed;
Rejoice, through whom the Creator becomes an infant.
Rejoice, O Bride unwedded.

[JohnFromCensornati]

Those ancient hymns are dreadful.

[minimalist syntax]

This is just a bad translation from the Greek. It is an amazingly beautiful hymn in Greek. Every two lines form a contradiction. and the verbs or nouns that express the contradiction rhyme. And the contradictions are far more complex than the English translation suggests.

[minimalist syntax]

And, this is chanted a capella. It's not one of those Protestant hymns with organs.

[minimalist syntax]

As is evident from my avatar, I really like that you wrote about Mary. However, I would like to point out that you have misquoted her and the Gospel. Nowhere is it recorded that Mary said: "Thy will be done." The Gospel says that Mary said: " ἰδοὺ ἡ δούλη κυρίου· γένοιτο μοι κατὰ τὸ ῥῆμα σου." That is, "Behold the servant of the Lord (referring to herself). May it happen to me in accordance with your speech." That is, she agrees to accept the proposed life the angel announces that God offers her. Moreover, "servant of the Lord" has a very particular and strong spiritual meaning. We see that in the 1st century Didache where Jesus is not referred to as the Son of God, but as the Servant of God. This is a reference to the suffering servant prophesied in Isaiah. And Jesus again is the servant when he washes the feet of his disciples at the last supper. So why would being a servant, make someone who pursues God subservient? To be this kind of servant requires incredible spiritual courage and strength.

"Yet why is the notion of Mary being passive and submissive so familiar? Because that is what church iconology tried to establish."

[minimalist syntax]

(I had meant to edit out the last part at the end that is the quote.)

[kwinter]

"This is a reference to the suffering servant prophesied in Isaiah."

Don't you think whoever wrote 'Luke' was familiar with 'Isaiah' and would of course write the story to fit the "prophesies"? Even if these were real people, no one would have been around at the time to witness this conversation.
Fulfilled prophesies are like throwing a dart at the wall ... then drawing circles around the dart ... and calling it a bulls eye.

[JohnFromCensornati]

"Mary was a template for feminism, is my theory."

I certainly hope not!

Assuming that this was a person that actually existed, she got pregnant and then claimed that god was her tango partner. We don't need any more of that.

[minimalist syntax]

JFC, we are going to have to discuss Mary. This is not at all what happened.

[JohnFromCensornati]

I know. I know. God came to her in the night and whispered a baby into her ear.