 |
The marginalizing of women during the millennia of patriarchy extended
not only to social and family life but also to the religious life. After Augustine
formulated his construct of original sin in the fourth century, the body, and in
particular, women's bodies were reviled as both objects of desire and of
loathing. Without a sacred reflection that looks like her (Reilly 1995) a woman
had no stake in the divine. She could be obedient to father Church, father God
and father Husband, but her relationship to herself, and in particular to her
body, was fractured with patriarchy's goddesslessness.
In these books I deliberately left only a small margin around the etchings.
The female figures occupy most of the page, symbolically bringing women's
spirituality to the centre and out of its historic margins. |