Matrix

by Lauren Groff

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?

A woman’s power exists only as far as she is allowed;

Animals are closer to god, of course; this is because animals have no need of god.

She will come closer to god when she is old, in a garden among the flowers and the birds, she tells herself; yes, someday she will sit in silence until she knows god, she thinks, lying down in her bed to sleep. Just not now.

Love attained too easily, she knows from courtly romances, is not love.

For Marie’s rigid heart, there can be no entanglements but those she has entered into

Without the first matrix, there could be no salvatrix, the greatest matrix of all.

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.

to engage in war with the world, one needs the world’s weapons.

all the things considered essential in youth prove with time that they are not. Skins are shed, and left at the roadside for the new young to pick up and carry on.

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.

Marie renounces the hunger that has always lit her from within. She will maintain what she has been given. She will learn contentment.

In fact, Cecily says, it was Marie’s unbeauty that was the making of her.

Of course Marie did have a greatness in her, but greatness was not the same as goodness.