Catholic Thought discussion
Mariette In Ecstasy
>
Part 2
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
Compline. Sister Emmanuelle retreats a half-step in her stall so she can peer behind Sister Antoinette and discretely adore the new postulant in her simple night-black habit and scarf. She’s as soft and kind as silk. She’s as pretty as affection. Even now, so soon, she prays the psalms distinctly, as if the habit of silence has taught her to cherish speech. And she seems so shrewd, so pure, so prescient. Sister Emmanuelle thinks, She is who I was meant to be.
And then the sisters turn and walk out in silence, and Sister Emmanuelle thrills as she hesitates just enough so that Mariette passes by. And then she quickly presses her left hand into the postulant’s. Mariette walks ahead and hides her surprise as she secretly glimpses her hand and the gift of Sister Emmanuelle’s starched cambric handkerchief with its six winged seraphim holding a plumed letter M gorgeously stitched into it in hours of needlepoint. She gives the seamstress an assessing glance and then Sister Emmanuelle flushes pink as the girl shyly smiles.
Such a little scene, and yet so much is communicated. We see during the communal praying of compline that the sisters are not just vessels performing their religious tasks but flesh and blood people who get distracted and build affections. At the center of the first paragraph, we get Sister Emmanuelle’s thoughts in what is called indirect interior monologue, the actual thoughts of a character even though the narrative is not in first person. Even though they are praying, Sister Emmanuelle shifts her head so that Mariette is in her purview, and she thinks, “She’s as soft and kind as silk. She’s as pretty as affection.” As we see elsewhere, being distracted as thus is a minor sin and giving such a gift would also no be condoned. The very fact that Sister Emmanuelle does it secretly and that Mariette accepts it in secret is I think a de facto acknowledgment that it was not proper. Sister Emmanuelle is not a novice. We see from the directory she is 54 years old, and so quite conscious of her failing. But these sort of human would be quite natural.
While I have this scene up, I should bring up another motif that runs through the novel, that of latent sexual longing. We see here what might be construed as sexual attraction for another woman. Sister Emmanuelle sneaks peaks at her beloved, she admires her, she considers her attractive, she is thrilled as Mariette passes by, she gives her a secret gift, and she flushes pink when the beloved returns an acknowledging gaze. So does Sister Emmanuelle have a consciously or unconscious same sex attraction for Marietter? On the other hand, she also admires how Mariette prays the psalms, seems so pure and prescient, which implies a divine knowledge, and she thinks, “She is who I was meant to be.” This is the language of religious desire, not sexual.
So which is it? What I think Hansen is doing is intertwining sexual desire with religious desire. The Freudian bent reader – and we moderns have all been shaped by that intellectually flawed set of notions – would say there is a latent lesbian inclination. But we also know that longing for God is many times delineated as a sexual pining. Christ is described as a “bridegroom.” Various woman saints have undergone a mystical marriage with Christ. Indeed, the wedding ring St. Catherine of Siena received was Christ’s foreskin. Biblically we have the Song of Solomon. Isaiah 62:5 (“For as a young man marries a virgin, So your sons will marry you; And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, So your God will rejoice over you.”), Hosea 2:19 (“"I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, In lovingkindness and in compassion.”), Rev 19:7 ("Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready."), Psalm 63:1 (“O God, You are my God; Early will I seek You; My soul thirsts for You; My flesh longs for You; In a dry and thirsty land; Where there is no water.”), and others. The language of religious intimacy is sometimes blurred with the language of sexual intimacy.
Freud might say that this is within the unconscious. I don’t know. In Christianity, God is love, and a component of love is sexuality. And just as in synesthesia, where one of the five senses is blend with another, so too different types of love can be commingle. I don’t think Sister Emmanuelle is having a sexual attraction to Mariette. I think she sees Mariette as she sees Christ, or at least connects her to Christ. She says that Mariette is the person she was “meant to be.” Well, Christ is the person we are all meant to be. This sort of sexual double entendre is a motif throughout the novel, and allows the reader to consider Mariette’s love for Christ to have a sexual connotation.
Mod
I don't think Freud did us any favors. We live in a hyper-sexualized culture and it is skewing our vision.
It is possible to look at the figure of a young woman in her prime and simply see her as beautiful. Mariette exemplifies God's gift of beauty and the perfection of the human female. Her outer beauty is a reflection of her inner beauty. Mariette reminded me of Terese of Lisieux in the sense that she has this deep, intuitive connection to the Holy, and it sets her apart. Sister Emmanuelle recognizes this and wishes she could have experiences on this level.
Manny, I agree that Hansen does a very good job creating nuanced characters with limited words. This is such a short book, there are numerous characters, yet each is distinct and sufficiently realized. I did not pick up on the same sex attraction, but I can see how a literary critic might construe that passage to imply a sexual attraction. I read it as Kerstin did, a mix of personal longing for some deeper sense of connection to Christ, of holiness and a pull of chaste affection for this young girl, possibly reminding Sr. Emmanuel of how she viewed herself or her spiritual life at one time. Since the nuns are often in silence, can't select who they will sit near at meals or any of the other ways that friendship is usually cultivated, the giving of a forbidden token is the only way that Sr. Emmanual can communicate warmth and approval to this newcomer. But, I did see some passages that I questioned, if something sexual was being implied, most of these were around the father. I already mentioned the odd acknowledgment that it must have been awkward for Marriette to have her father examine her to verify her virginity. I am not aware that virginity tests were required of postulants. There is another sceen near the end of the book where Mariette's wounds are examined and she is undressed before several individuals including her father and the priest. I felt a similar awkwardness when the father examined Celine. Hansen goes out of his way to highlight nakedness at various places, especially in these sceens. The story could have been easily told without any of this. The father did not have to be the only doctor in the town. I keep wondering what Hansen is trying to signal to the reader.
Mod
As soon as I get a little time, I do want to put out my thoughts as to why Celine cancer scene is there. I'll leave it as a question for everyone. What's the point of that all? What did that have to do with Mariette?
I understand Celine's death, her cancer; I am wondering about the regular mentioning of this physical contact between father/physician and Mariette/Celine.
Well, the rest of us might want to discuss it before you "get to it". Anyone have any reaction to or thoughts about Celine's cancer, her death or the repeated reference to the father making some sort of physical examination involving the daughters' nudity?
Mod
Celine's death reminded me of so many motherless saints. Since it appears that Mariette's mother seems to have died when she was quite young, Celine, her sister who is around 20 years older than her, is the closest thing that Mariette has to a mother figure. Celine is also the prioress which is a mother figure in the monestary. So, this is the death of a mother in a very real way, an event that has led many saints to develop a deep intimacy with God, a filling of the emotional void. I realize that Mariette's spiritual experiences began about 4 years before this, but it takes on new dimensions with Celine's death. I don't know if it was intended, but I saw some parallels between Celine's physical suffering from the cancer and Mariette's developing of symptoms that cause great physical pain. Mariette is not allowed to mourn, to process her grief, so, is Hansen suggesting that this emotional energy is being redirected into this spiritual energy? Or, is he suggesting that, with the death of her sister, she has a need for new attention. There is as many hints that this might be a psychosomatic condition as that she is engaging in self harm to create these wounds. Or, of course, there is the spiritual explanation that these mystical gifts are a consolation by Christ for the loss of her sister.I am trying to figure out if Hansen set this at Christmas for a particular reason. It is the season of gifts and the celebration of the Incarnation. These are Mariette's gifts and the sign of Christ's love for her in her own flesh. But, is this reading things into the text because I want to make everything somehow symbolic?
As for the multiple times when the father is said to be examining his daughter's naked body, my first thought, in this era of sexual abuse cases dominating the news, was that Hansen was signaling abuse by the father. But, I fear that is simply what is on my mind, not necessarily what is on the author's mind. If Manny is correct and Freud is in the author's mind, than it could signal the primal attraction of child for the parent of the opposite gender. If this is the case, Hansen does not develop this, only hint at it, as I see things.
Mod
But equally interesting is that we don’t really get that much preparation for Mariette’s stigmata. She goes from having “experiences” to bleeding stigmata and coma-like ecstasies. Now there are foreshadows and time shifts of bringing in clips from the inquest prepares us to some degree, but not fully. When you look at Mariette in August on her entrance and even throughout most of Part 2, she is completely changed in Part 3 after the stigmata. The amount of change in four months of time is breath taking.
Narratively Mother Céline is a sort of Mariette’s doppelgänger, a double who serves to show parallels and contrasts with the main character. The fact that she’s her sister raised in the same home, having a similar relationship with the father, taken the same vows, and in the same convent is pretty suggestive of that. That she experiences a crucifixion like Mariette (and here I’m jumping ahead to Part 3) is also indicative of a doublet. Her sufferings, like Mariette’s sufferings, are a recreation of the Christ’s passion. There is the carrying of a cross, pains in the flesh as of a scourging, stripping, stab wounds to the side, the release of blood and water, and finally the humiliations.
I’m not sure we realize just how a crucifixion was meant to humiliate. Stripped naked and staked to a cross (and believe me they did not leave a loin cloth for privacy) where one slowly dies in front of the world, unlike a hanging which is fairly quick, is about as shameful a death as possible. For a Jew it was deeply shameful because it says so in the Torah: Deut 21:23, “for he that is [so] hanged is accursed of God.” I’m sure Christ had loss of bladder and bowels during his passion and crucifixion, loss of physical control while asphyxiating, and loss of emotional control under torment. There are citations of sexual abuse of people undergoing the scurging, and I have read some speculate Christ may have been subject to that too. Scripture has undoubtedly cleaned up some of this out of respect to the Lord, but all of this was meant to destroy the dignity of the crucified.
Mother Céline’s sufferings, not having the ability to care for oneself, having to undergo the indignity of a medical examination of her private parts from her own father no less, having to urinate in front of people in a glass, and finally the uncontrolled expulsion of blood is destruction of her dignity. She is undergoing the Lord’s passion, of which we will all have to undergo at some time, unless we are blessed with a quick death.
I’ll delineate Mariette’s undergoing of the passion when we get to Part 3. There are differences, contrasts. The most significant is that Céline are completely biological while Mariette’s are completely non-biological. Theologically one could think of Céline as a forerunner to Marriete, just as John the Baptist is a forerunner to Christ.
Now there is also the suggestion that Mother Céline’s sufferings is a seed that works in Mariette’s psychology. This is another form of the psychosomatic theory of what happens to Mariette. And just like with the Freudian sexual psychosomatic theory, Ron Hansen wants the reader with the modernist world view to be led down this path. Here the theory would be that Mariette overly identifies with her sister and takes on her malady, or something to that effect. Perhaps the term is “psychological identification” but I’m not sure. But it can’t be. Perhaps one can say that her coma might be so induced, but there is no way a stigmata can be so induced psychologically.
Mod
No I don't believe there is sexual abuse going on with the father. That's what cancer doctors do. I take my mother to a hematologist and even though it was only suspected that my mother might have cancer, the doctor routinely examines her belly and breasts. It's rather embarrassing for me to be there, and I can imagine what my mother feels. I don't recall the scene with Mariette. I'll have to re-read that. But I thought the father was just doing doctorly things, of which are inherently humiliating. It's humiliating to be in a hospital.
I too can't put my finger on why those two big events happen on Christmas Eve. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps it has to do with the incarnation. I don't know.
Nice parallel of Celine's illness and Mariette's mystical experiences. Thank you, Manny.I agree that Celine's examin is standard for a doctor. I just wondered why Hansen chose to have the father also be the doctor. I had not considered that it was simply to magnify the humiliation factor. And, of course, having Mariette be the required nun in the room allowed Mariette to see exactly what was going on.
It makes me think about the reaction of the other nuns to both women's experiences as well as the reaction of the larger Catholic community. Most of us are in awe of people who are gifted with such things as the stigmata or ecstatic trances. We are less in awe of those who suffer debilitating conditions or painful deaths. Maybe it is in part because the former is rather rare; maybe it is because we fear the later in our own lives. Luckily, Mother Church does not associate such phenononon with sanctity. Of course, we all know that the real sanctity is in the way we bear our cross, not in the character of the cross we are handed. What if we actually regarded the slow debilitation of ALS or MS, the loss of dignity in the stripping down of independence that often comes with aging, with the pain and undignified treatment of cancer with being privileged to bear the wounds of Christ as we do for the stigmata? Would we pray through our own sufferings and the sufferings of others differently? Would we serve the sick and dying differently? Would we recognize holiness in different contexts?
The novice mistress has real concerns about Mariette long before the mystical experiences come about. I loved the early interview she has with Mariette in which she describes the motivation that brought Mariette to the convent, concluding that it was her own story. She sees a reflection of herself in Mariette and what she sees troubles her.Here is another moment between the two of them which concludes with concern for Mariette.
Mother Saint-Raphaël is hoeing weeds around a garden bench as Mariette kneels with pruning shears and snips back the wood canes on pink rosebushes. Sister Claudine is fifteen yards away as she heaves and shakes ammonium sulfate onto a tilled flower bed. Every now and then she pauses and stares at the postulant with envy. Why, Mariette cannot understand, for Mother Saint-Raphaël hoes in silence. Even when Mariette chats about trifles and foolishness, she sees the mistress of novices frowning at her, as if trying to find a hidden character behind the girl’s eyes. And Mother Saint-Raphaël only sighs when Mariette talks about religion.
She is surprised, therefore, when she pricks the heel of her
65
hand with a thorn and irritatedly presses up a bead of blood, and Mother Saint-Raphaël interestedly kneels opposite her and holds Mariette’s hand in both her own. "Oh my dear," she says. "Are you badly hurt?"
"Oh no; just a thorn."
"Shall I get something for it?"
"I’ll be fine, truly."
Mother Saint-Raphaël puts spit onto her forefinger and softly caresses the blood from the wound, and there’s such an odd confusion of feelings in the grandmotherly face that Mariette hesitantly wrests her hand away.
Everything changes in Mother Saint-Raphaël then, as if a great door has slammed shut inside her. "Don’t misinterpret simple tenderness," she says.
Mariette travels between worry and sympathy before she replies in humility, "I have, Mother. I see that now."
Mother Saint-Raphaël gets up with effort and goes back to work and hoes with a kind of urgency. And when, just before meditation, she walks with Mariette to the tool room, she says, "There’s a great deal about you that troubles me."
The following incident occurs before the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, which would be at the end of summer, and hints at the stigmata long before it appears. Hansen is planting a seed about Mariette's role in the stigmata.
Wringing a sponge, Mariette flinches with sudden pain and bewilderingly heeds her hands.
"Have you hurt yourself?" Sister Catherine asks.
She grins at the aged woman and says, "What a great favor Christ shall be giving me!"
I also liked the sceen where the father comes to visit his daughters. In a very few words, Hansen reveals deep ambiguity in Mariette. She recalls the little tendernesses of her father, the way he prepared her morning eggs, the feel of his whiskers, and she also is cautious of him, the recollection that in his house there is only one right answer, an inability to speak freely. Fifteen years in the monestary, Celine seems to have no discomfort with the visit or the physical contact with his hand, but Mariette shrinks away, won't look at him, touch his hand. How much of this is self-doubts about her vocation, that if she interacts with the affection of a daughter, she will weaken. How much of this is a false sense of what holiness or austerity looks like.
Mod
II agree that Celine's examin is standard for a doctor. I just wondered why Hansen chose to have the father also be the doctor."
That's a good question. He didn't have to, did he? You had asked if he were anti-religious. There’s a little scene in Part 3 I just re-read where he happens on a chance meeting with Mariette at the church. The Grille separates them. He asks about her wounds and she informs him they have healed. He asks to examine them. She refuses to show him.
“Just let me look at your hands.”
She hides them behind her back.
“Are they bleeding still?”
She dully shakes her head.
“Are they healed?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, let me see how that is done?”
“No, Papa.”
“Examining them won’t hurt.”
“Christ has forbidden them to science.”
Her father frowns with irritation at Mariette and says, “You are talking idiotically.”
“I have said what I have to say,” she says. We love you Papa.” And she goes. (p. 140)
I still don’t know if he’s anti-religious but he definitely stands in for empirical science. She refuses to give into the science, though she will have to later. I can’t answer as to why Hansen combines it with her father. Perhaps because it makes it even more surprising and undermining of the scientific world view that it all started under his nose.
As I was typing the conversation above, I was struck with Mariette’s last words, “We love you Papa.” Who is included in the “we”? Céline is dead. The rest of the Sisters? Not sure why that would be. Christ? Interesting.
Mod
That is a great scene. I was going to comment on the various mortifications that Mariette does to herself. They are I think part of the possible hoax theory some of the sisters believe.
As to Mother Saint-Ralphael, she is a very interesting figure. While some sisters are definitely in the real stigmata camp and some in the not real, Mother Saint-Ralphael seems open to the possibility of them being real but I think forces herself not to believe them.
Mod
Irene what pages are those scenes on? I would like to compare them side by side.
I think this is another significant conversation. It is from the first meeting between Mariette and the priest chaplain of the convent. This is his pastoral response to Mariette telling him that she has had mystical encounters with Christ since the age of 13."Well then, I shall try to be." Edging around a dining table chair, Marriott gets tiredly onto it and sits with his heels on a rung. "Hear me, Mariette. You are not the first young nun to tell me such things. Especially now in the infancy of your religious vocation, Satan will be tempting you in a hundred ways. When you see Christ or hear Him, you must be mistrusting and wary, for Christ is a Word that does not give voice to the ear but goes directly into the mind. Jesus does not usually speak; Jesus performs and inspires. Also, He does not make Himself present to our human senses but in the holy desires of the will. Jesus impresses His form upon the soul and fills the heart with joy."
Mariette says nothing.
Manny, p 50 starts the conversation with Sr. Rapheal where she guesses at Mariette's motivation because it is her own teenaged longings.
p. 64 is the sceen with the thorn in Mariette's hand
p 73 is Mariette's prediction that greater things are coming
p 77 is the visit from the father
Mod
Yes! I was going to comment on this. Empirical science is everything what you can see and measure, it is all about how something works or is. The father is a stand-in for the rationalism and reductionism that came out of the Enlightenment. From this perspective we can understand why he is a doctor, he has to see, measure with his instruments, and feel with his hands before something becomes real. When he gets his answer his inquiry stops. He doesn't take anything on faith. Mariette not showing her hands is simply "idiotic." What he is missing is the why something is. What he is missing is the end purpose. What is the ultimate purpose of Mariette's stigmata? I haven't worked it all out yet, but they do contain a leap of faith he is not capable of, and this is why she is forbidden to show them.
Mod
Friends, I feel blessed to have read this book and have learned so much from your musings. I am always torn between reading other readers thoughts AS I am reading or wait until I am done. With the insights you have provided, I wish I had read them during.
Part 1 was indeed just one day long, the day of August 15th, 1906, and Part 2 picks up on August 16th and ends on Christmas Eve, December 24th. If you haven’t noticed, each vignette starts off being dated with the Feast Day Mass in the liturgical calendar, so the reader can date the events. Other than the occasional inserted fragment of the inquiry into Mariette’s experiences, the narrative time flows sequentially.
Mariette begins to meet the various Sisters, accustom herself to the rhythms of convent life, and develop her personal intense prayer and contemplative practices, above and beyond what the Sisters at the convent are required. She meets with the Mistress of Novices, Mother Saint-Raphaël, a stern elderly woman who is able to discern Mariette’s personality. Mariette goes through catechism lessons, of which she is flawless, works the daily activities requiring manual labor, and increases her devotion through subtle acts of mortification. Mariette writes confidential notes to Père Marriott about the intensity and dearth of her personal connections with Christ, and Mother Céline has intercepted them and secretly reads them.
We see instances of Mariette’s self-flagellation and impulses to increase their severity. We see scenes of latent sexual desires and conduct, and even play. We see a deep, ardent relationship with Christ and a commitment to its fullest expression. Various sisters notice all these things, and we the reader can justify what we think happens to Mariette by pointing to something in this section.
Finally the last sections of Part 2 dramatize the discovery, painful endurance, and ultimately death from cancer of Mother Céline. Mother Saint-Raphaël allows Mariette in the care of her blood sister, where she watches her older sister undergo the humiliation of medical diagnosis and the suffering decline and death. Her father as the local doctor is called up to perform the medical exams. Part 2 ends with Mother Céline’s funeral and Requiem Mass and Mariette reaching her highest level of ecstasy yet, kneeling in front of the crucifix in a trance emulating the suffering of the Lord.