Bodies and beliefs: Religious identity in contemporary American women's narratives.
Item
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Title
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Bodies and beliefs: Religious identity in contemporary American women's narratives.
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Identifier
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AAI3205004
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identifier
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3205004
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Creator
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Toohey, Elizabeth.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Nancy K. Miller
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Date
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2006
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American | Women's Studies | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines religious identity in women's narratives in postwar America. The texts I explore trace the spiritual quests of protagonists who transgress social and religious gendered codes in a search for meaningful religious practice. Resisting the notion of universal truths, the authors of these texts overturn conceptions of God as patriarchal and univocal, often through formal innovations characteristic of postmodernism. Breaking down the ethnic basis of religion while acknowledging religion's troubling history of racism and sexism, these narratives instead cast religion as a means to cultivate community and social justice. Religion, formerly defined through exclusionary practices, is thus re-imagined as dynamic and performative.;Chapter 1 focuses on Grace Paley's "The Loudest Voice" and "Three Days and a Question," and Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation," which center on strong female protagonists and position the problem of racial and religious identity side by side. Chapter 2 examines the role of narrative and ritual in religion as a means of healing trauma in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and Mary Gordon's memoir, The Shadow Man. Silko and Gordon both investigate religion's ties to ethnic culture through their protagonists' bi-ethnic identity, and posit the need to adapt and individualize traditional religious ritual. Chapter 3 explores Allegra Goodman's Paradise Park and Louise Erdrich's The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, novels that follow protagonists who overtly challenge the norms of religious gender roles and religious-ethnic communities. These two examine how performance may bring about deeper spiritual communion or, conversely, create a sense of alienation. Religious community is also a central theme of Toni Morrison's Paradise, the subject of Chapter 4. Paradise focuses on the misogyny and rigidity that attends Christian rhetoric, and poses as an alternative a hybridized religion that draws on Catholic and West African beliefs evoked through a maternal divine presence, who stands for political autonomy, the curative powers of nature, and sexual freedom. The Epilogue examines Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees as the culmination in popular culture of the movement towards ecumenical and self-crafted religious practice, and the foregrounding of race and gender in religious identities and communities.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
