| dc.description.abstract | The association of women and mysticism this century is not always perceived
as a positive one. In Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (1995), the feminist
philosopher of religion, Grace Jantzen, suggests that the experience of mysticism
gradually became defined as an ineffable, private emotional encounter in order to
remove it from the sphere of political management of society and religion. She writes
of a direct increase of association between mysticism and women, who were
permitted to have spiritual experiences, but powerless to speak with authority about
their insights. Jantzen's view of this association of women with mysticism is therefore
somewhat negative; she warns of mysticism's ability to silence and disempower. But
as women mystics, particularly in the medieval period, have spoken and written of
their (often vivid and imaginative) experiences with authority, this thesis explores
how ideas about mysticism have been addressed by women writers this century. In
particular, 1investigate whether the women writers treated in this thesis developed the
definition of such spiritual experience in a more affirmative and expressive way than
Jantzen suggests.
Rather than assuming that mysticism is an unchanging spiritual experience
within a strictly religious context, this thesis explores how women writers discovered
a creative expression of their inner spirituality through the inspiration of
contemporary ideas about mysticism, and how they helped to move these ideas on. I
introduce my argument, therefore, by examining constructions of mysticism at the
beginning of the twentieth century, when the idea of mysticism was defined and
developed both in terms of experiential philosophy and of psychology. In particular,
the attention paid to the emotional effects of a "mystical experience" became
associated, by William James, with the importance of what he termed the "subliminal
realm" of the mind, a realm which would subsequently be defined as the unconscious
by Freud, but which James saw as a valid channel for imagination and spirituality As
well as drawing attention to the "subliminal realm" and its role in spiritual experience,
James first suggested the idea of the "stream of consciousness", a term which became
important for much modernist literature, but which James did not link directly with
the expression of mysticism. Not all psychological studies of mysticism were as
open-minded as James'; I also look at texts which were hostile and eclectic in turn.
And James himself was not immune to contemporary prejudice regarding gender. But
the period's general interest in the imaginative workings of the mind, flowing from the
unconscious into consciousness, and the struggle to express this imaginative process,
has led me to the study of its literature in order to explore how such ideas about
mysticism were used, by women writers, within a creative context.
Evelyn Underhill provides a link between the areas of religious thought and
women's fiction writing. Underhill in fact started her writing life as a novelist,
exploring those themes of spirituality which she was later, more famously, to address
in texts such as Mysticism, in which James' ideas are acknowledged. Importantly,
Mysticism was certainly read by two women writers - May Sinclair and Dorothy
Richardson - who, while fascinated by mysticism, were equally concerned to develop
the novelistic form in order to allow the expression of individual consciousness. They
were also interested in the subject of gender to a greater degree than was Underhill.
By examining the work first ofMay Sinclair, whose mysticism is chiefly concerned
with loss, then of Dorothy Richardson, who was to develop the mystical concepts of
vision and illumination, I trace the progression of mysticism's influence in women's
writing, an influence which Underhill had to a large extent initiated.
Underhill, Sinclair and Richardson were not the only women writers to
explore mysticism alongside stylistic innovation and an awareness of gender issues.
There was, for example, Virginia Woolf, whose aunt, Caroline Stephen, was a
respected Quaker. But rather than continue to explore all the women writing in this
period, a task too large for this thesis, I move on to show how ideas about mysticism,
gender and writing have developed in later thinkers. In examining the ideas of the
feminist critics Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva, I show that mysticism, and the ways of
articulating what James termed an "ineffable" experience, are even more strongly
linked with gender and innovative creative writing in their work, whether "novelistic"
in a strict sense or not.
I have not anal.vsed the work ofUnderhill. Sinclair, and Richardson solely. in
terms of psychoanalytically acute feminist criticism I, although I introduce such
Such work is generally available: Jean Radford's examination of PiIbTfi mauc.
for example critical ideas where appropriate, and have shown that these writers point towards the
critical concepts of later feminist writers and thinkers. My emphasis is on the
particular space lor creativity which mysticism develops and towards which psychoanalysis with its emphasis on the talking curehas indicated but paid less attention to than the aetiology and
symptoms of madness and hysterical disorders. Rather than continue to pursue this
psychoanalytical preoccupation, I have looked at the work of the later feminist critics
as experimental mystical writers in their own right, and I suggest that it is mysticism.
rather than hysteria or other forms of "madness", which has provided the creative
space for gendered exploration of imagination and writing. Just as psychoanalytic
criticism seeks to explore those "moments of vision" which madness has been said to
facilitate in writers such as Woolf
I have set out to show that the insights of
mysticism, classed as neither mental illness nor rigorous rationality, have played an
essential part in the development of women's fiction-writing, criticism and religious
thought this century, allowing, additionally, the closer relationship of these three
disciplines.
In concluding this thesis therefore, I examine the way in which mysticism has
provided a place for "visionary" gendered discourse in contemporary theology, and
return to the area of religious thought, where I had begun my research. I examine
ways in which there is now an increased awareness of the imagination in feminist
theology and, specifically, in mysticism within a feminist theological context. The
developments of mysticism's creative space have facilitated this awareness in
theology, just as they have in the fiction and criticism through which I have traced its
influence. Although the question of what constitutes mysticism and who counts as a
mystic may remain open (plurality being one of the emphases of feminist critical
thought), the conclusion of this thesis affirms that the space of spiritual creativity
developed by mysticism has been one of the major forces to have shaped women's
writing and critical thought (both literary and religious) this century. | en_US |
