writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

handmaid? 27
That Mary writes at all is highly unlikely for a Nazarene girl of her time, but is portrayed in
Renaissance artists’ depictions of Anna teaching her daughter to read, and likewise, Mary teaching
her son: “I…feel the power of …words is restricted to men…Like the arts of reading and writing and
study. I will have these gifts that men hoard. And I will teach my son.” 28 Though literacy is
forbidden, 29 Mary’s mother Anna comes from “a wealthy enlightened family” and insists that all her
children learn to read and write Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. 30 Writing gives Mary agency, the
opportunity denied her in the Gospels to tell her own story. In my novel, the desperate and pregnant
Mary fashions a fiction—replete with the angel Gabriel—delivers it via letter to Joseph, and
proclaims her miraculous pregnancy. Those familiar with Luke 1:46‐55 will recognize the Magnificat
re‐purposed. Scribbling this story serves to save Mary’s life and that of her unborn child, but it
unwittingly sets in motion the familiar tragic events to come. However, rather than attributing these
solely to the son, in my book, the mother also bears much responsibility. My intent was “to unweave
the patriarchal myths, language, and ideology,” to employ “feminist de/mystification as a counter act
and so demonstrate that the patriarchal myths and their meanings are neither universal nor eternal
and that they can be recreated.” 31 Mary invents her own notion of the role of handmaid of the Lord,
defying the feminine submissiveness that marks her myth, and consequently, writing the script of her
life.
Jesus’ birth is neither bloodless or pain‐free—both further fabrications by men of the Church,
appalled by the imagined filth of women’s secretions and secret womb workings—and once her child
is born, Mary, uncharacteristic of a first‐century woman, is no submissive wife as depicted in so much
art and as prescribed by the Church fathers. 32 Despite the male privileges forbidden by her culture
and times, it is Mary who determines to flee Herod to Egypt, to train with the mystic healer, Magda,
and to travel to Cairo for further training, to consult the works of Aristotle and Hippocrates, to “grab
[knowledge] with both her hands” 33 regardless of Joseph’s protests:
‘Eve wanted knowledge and look where it got us.’
‘I think you should not listen so closely to that rabbi. He infects your mind….Think of
this, Joseph: maybe someone didn’t want Eve to have knowledge. Why is that?.... Life is
risk, Joseph. But knowing helps to outsmart risk.’ 34
Her training opens Mary’s eyes to the suffering of the world, especially of women, children, the
infirm and the impoverished. She is troubled by the beating death of one patient, and realizes that
there are neither havens nor sanctuaries for victims of domestic and sexual abuse. Moved to pity by
the lepers she visits, Mary adopts one of their newborns as her daughter. Most notably, she is
devastated at the news that Herod Antipas “has put to the sword a thousand thousand babies,” and
she recognizes her culpability in the slaughter of these innocents:
...all because of me. That stupid angel story.
Is this Yahweh’s punishment of me? What kind of cruel God watches this from heaven
and is unmoved to stop it?
You can part the Red Sea, but you cannot save those innocent lives?
I shake my fist at you, Yahweh….
Finally, the chorus [of wailing mothers] shrieked across the desert and into Egypt and
into my own open wretched throat….
I feel dead. Or that I should be. This is my doing….My words have done this. Mary has
condemned thousands of babies to death across the land of Israel. To save myself… 35
With her growing sense of responsibility and understanding of injustice, comes Mary’s decision to
return to Nazareth and begin Wellhouse, her dream “home for many, a house of cures. A refuge for
the sick and dispossessed,” so that she can continue what has become her life’s work. 36 As a healer
who offers shelter, Mary will become an authentic subject. Through this act of daring, she will, as De
Beauvoir recommends, defy the conventional, and though she will not achieve full economic
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