writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

Keywords: Fictional biography, Feminism, Myth, History / fiction intersection, Objectivity / truth
Gail Sidonie SOBAT
MacEwan University,
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Notes
1
Linda Hutcheon, Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Canadian Contemporary Fiction (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988): 82.
2
Cheryl Glenn, “Truth, Lies, and Method: Revisiting Feminist Historiography.” College English 62,
No. 3 (January 2000): 388.
3
Luba, “Let it Go,” Secrets and Sins, Capitol‐EMI of Canada, 1984, compact disc.
4
Gail Sidonie Sobat, The Book of Mary (Toronto: Sumach, 2006).
5
Funda BaŞak Dörchel, “Female Identity”: Rewritings of Greek and Biblical Myths by
Contemporary Women Writers” (Ankara: Middle East Technical University, 2011): 35.
6
Hannah Arendt, cited in Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt: Life is a Narrative (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2001): 9.
7
Michael Benton, “Towards a Poetics of Literary Biography,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 45,
No. 3 (Fall 2011): 84.
8
Lyndall Gordon, Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (London: Vintage, 1995), 168‐169.
9
Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 57.
10
Benton, “Towards a Poetics of Literary Biography,” 69.
11
Ibid., 71.
12
Ibid., 79.
13
Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, (London:
Picador, 1985): 3‐4.
14
Ibid., 68.
15
Ibid., 66.
16
Ibid., 66‐67.
17
Ibid., 67.
18
Ibid., 19.
19
Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Toronto: Harper Collins Canada Ltd., 1972): 142.
20
Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 335.
21 Henry Adams wrote: “The study of Our Lady… leads directly back to Eve, and lays bare the
whole subject of sex.” Adams, Henry. Mont St. Michel and Chartres. (London: Book Jungle, 2007):
198. Woman is not associated with the spirit or with reason, but rather with the flesh, and “the
evils of sex were particularly identified with the female. Woman was womb and womb was evil:
an extension of Augustine’s argument about original sin.” Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 57.
Therefore, Mary was Eve’s antithesis: “Eve, cursed to bear children rather than blessed with
motherhood, was identified with nature, a form of low matter that drags man’s soul down the
spiritual ladder….Thus during the ascetic revolt of Christianity’s first centuries, [there was a] need
to exempt the mother of Christ from tainted sexuality and to proclaim her virgin purity…” (58‐
59).Ibid., 58‐59. Consequently, at the First Council of Constantinople, “[Mary’s] virgin
motherhood was proclaimed” and was “key to orthodox Christology.” Ibid., 64.
22
Francis, S.J. Suarez, “The Dignity and the Virginity of the Mother of God,” Disputations I, V, VI
from The Mysteries of the Life of Christ (West Baden Springs, Ind: West Baden College, 1954): 41.
23
Sobat, The Book of Mary, 30.
24
Ibid., 29.
25
Ibid., 20.
26
Ibid., 9.
27
Ibid., 36.
28
Ibid., 62.
29 As in biblical times through to the 20
th
century: “in order to protect women further from evil
798