Tradition calls Mary the new Eve.9 She did what the first Eve failed to do. Eve failed to be a woman. She took the initiative. She “proposed,” and she became “female”—the instrument of procreation, “ruled over” by man.10 She made herself, and also the man whose “eve” she was, the slaves of her “femininity” and the whole of life a dark war of sexes in which “possession” is in fact the violent and desperate desire to kill the shameful lust that never dies. But Mary “took no initiative.” In love and obedience she expected the initiative of the Other. And when it came, she accepted it, not
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