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outside influences, their education in any but the traditional subjects—music, embroidery—was
frowned upon, for ignorance was equated with innocence….men were capable of coping with the
consequences of knowledge, but the greater weakness of the female sex, as epitomized by Eve’s
frailty in the garden, ill‐suited women for study.” Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 186‐187.
30
Sobat, The Book of Mary, 42.
31
BaŞak Dörchel, “Female Identity,” 32.
32 Church fathers asserted that “in motherhood Mary was glorified, and through her prostration
before her child, became more glorious for her humility.” Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 183.
Simone de Beauvoir comments on this patriarchal myth‐making, “For the first time in human
history the mother kneels before her son; she freely accepts her inferiority. This is the supreme
masculine victory, consummated in the cult of the Virgin—it is the rehabilitation of woman
through the accomplishment of her defeat.” Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex. (New York:
Vintage, 2011): 189.
33
Sobat, The Book of Mary, 75.
34
Ibid., 73‐74.
35
Ibid., 63.64.
36
Ibid., 83.
37
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (London: Penguin, 1977): 162.
38
Gerda Lerner defines "feminist consciousness" as: “[T]he awareness of women that they belong to a
subordinate group; that they have suffered wrongs as a group; that their condition of subordination is
not natural, but is societally determined; that they must join with other women to remedy these
wrongs; and finally, that they must and can provide an alternate vision of societal organization in which
women as well as men will enjoy autonomy and self‐determination.” Gerda Lerner, The Creation of
Patriarchy. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986): 14.
39 Through her work at Wellhouse, I am improvising with long‐held mythological notions of Mary:
“She listens to the implorations of mankind, ‘groaning and weeping in this valley of tears’—as the
Salve Regina sings—and promises to ease their pain with heavenly medicine….Her love of
mankind is maternal, and her qualities of mercy, gentleness, loving kindness, indulgence,
forgiveness, are all seen as motherly. All men are her children through Christ her son…and so she
lavishes a mother’s love and pity on all her brood.” Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 285‐286. As
likely befitting the role of motherhood in Christ’s time, I extended these maternal qualities to the
son, so that Jesus becomes his mother’s son, “such a nice boy.” Sobat, The Book of Mary, 237.
40
Sobat, The Book of Mary, 98.
41
Lerner points out: “a man’s social class was the result of the relationship to the means of production,
whereas, a woman’s social class depended on [her] ties to a man who gave [her] access to material
resources.” Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, 215. Basak Dörschel elaborates: “Moreover, as women
were denied any rights, they could not escape patriarchy. Lerner notes that they could leave their
father’s house only to go to live under their husband’s hegemony. Furthermore, women who have
refused such patriarchal codes have always been marginalized in history. These independent women
were considered ‘not respectable’. This respectable/not respectable categorization of woman by
patriarchy, Lerner declares, also functions as another means of oppression on women.” BaŞak Dörchel,
“Female Identity,” 39. According to Lerner, “[men] punish by ridicule, exclusion, or ostracism, any
woman who assumes the right to interpret her own role‐ or worst of sins‐ the right to rewrite the
script.” Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, 13.
42 In creating the twelve women of Wellhouse and the character of Anna/Andrew, I sought to
include different castes, races and orientations of women other than Mary who is a privileged,
fairly affluent Jewess, in an attempt to stress “the multiplicity of differences that nuance
women’s lived experiences, social and political activism, or literary and historical
representations.” Antoinette Burton, “‘History’ is Now: feminist theory and the production of
historical feminisms.” Women’s History Review 1, No. 1 (1992): 32. I am well aware that there is
no such concept of a “unified ‘feminist past.’” Ibid., 32. The sisterhood of the Eastern Star is not
meant as a “cheerful narrative”; indeed, the sisters are meant to represent the women who are
marginalized – those of the distant past, and certainly, those of the late 20 th and 21 st centuries.
Ibid.,33. Neither are Mary and the relationship with her sisters meant to be cast as essentialist.
True, they are bound by the gender roles of early 1 st ‐century Nazarene women, but they are not
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