Matrix

by Lauren Groff

That, due to her, the queen’s, own efforts over these months, this poor illegitimate Marie from nowhere in Le Maine had at last been made prioress of a royal abbey. Wasn’t that wonderful. Now at last they knew what to do with this odd half sister to the crown.

she could not be a nun, she was unworthy, and besides she had no godly vocation whatsoever in any way, at

why should babies be born into sin, why should she pray to the invisible forces, why would god be a trinity, why should she, who felt her greatness hot in her blood, be considered lesser because the first woman was molded from a rib and ate a fruit and thus lost lazy Eden?

Anyone with eyes could see she had always been meant for holy virginity.

She’s more fit to lead the animals she cares for than she is to lead her sisters, with whom she quarrels and whom she torments with her tongue-lashings.

In the refectory, they are given work, the weakest given the hardest things, for pain in this place is proof of godliness.

And the lady said, besides, didn’t Marie know a real lady does not ever make her hands bloody but rather she gently influences others to do her worst work for her?

For it is a deep and human truth that most souls upon the earth are not at ease unless they find themselves safe in the hands of a force far greater than themselves.

In a thousand more years humans will be as thoughtless as the cud-chewing kine of the fields.

Women in this world are vulnerable; only reputation can keep them from being crushed.

Marie thinks that true we are not animals; but it would be foolish to think we’re better than animals. Animals are closer to god, of course; this is because animals have no need of god.

she considers, to counter corruption, a similar corruption is only logical and right.

Good and evil live together; dark and light. Contradictions can be true at once. The world holds a great and pulsing terror at its center. The world is ecstatic in its very deeps.

But sin is introduced at the time in life, around eleven or twelve years old, when the bodily serpent wakes and yearns to spread its venom.

And without the flaw of Eve there could be no purity of Mary.

And without the womb of Eve, which is the House of Death, there could be no womb of Mary, which is the House of Life. Without the first matrix, there could be no salvatrix, the greatest matrix of all.

But then Eleanor says that but of course if you put an eagle in a cage for more than a decade, she will try to peck your eyes out when you open the gate.

This labyrinth is being seen as an act of aggression. Women act counter to all the laws of submission when they remove themselves from availability.

She says to Goda to please tell her if she believes that women are the lesser sex? Goda snaps that of course women are the frailer and the more sinful sex. Corrupted and weak.

Not simply confession but also Mass? She is putting her hand in the fire. Marie should not be surprised when her flesh burns.

Ruth at last says, carefully, that she loves her friend Marie, but she hates the devil that has possessed her abbess with all her eternal soul.

Marie warns them that if she lets them do this, she is allowing them to commit sins on the part of the abbey. Young Wulfhild smiles and her eyeteeth are sharp, like her mother’s. Here she is, Marie thinks. The darkest piece of Wulfhild is alive in this one. Young Wulfhild says isn’t it lucky, then, that Marie is their confessor.

She sees now what should have been apparent. She has made her life holy, she has lived sinless, she has said all the right words, but deep within she has coveted her own rebellious pride.

Collapse is the constant state of humanity, she tells herself;

For this community is precious, there is a place here even for the maddest, for the discarded, for the difficult, in this enclosure there is love enough here even for the most unlovable of women.