Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest by Carol P. Christ (review)

BOOK REVIEWS307 "God forbid that the novel should attempt to solve social questions," Julian Schmidt decreed. Fontane's realistic novels, however, focus on social relationships and thus mark the beginning of social realism in Germany and the end of Bernd's charting of a movement. It is a movement rooted in a Scandanavian tradition most of us do not know and separate from the English, French, and Russian traditions most of us do. It is a movement and not a period in Bernd's view: Poetic Realism has a beginning (Schmidt's literary program), a middle (the countermovement of the aesthetic idealists) and an end (Fontane). Bernd has intelligently compressed an enormously complex subject into a short book, graciously written. The bibliography is an enthusiastic Baedeker for the overwhelming literature on the topic. Both beginners and those long in the field should appreciate Bernd's study. PENNY SCHOONOVER Boise State University Carol P. Christ. Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest. Boston: Beacon Press, 1980. 159p. Christ's excellent interdisciplinary study of women's spiritual quests reflects the more recent interest of feminists in gender identity. Her thesis is that unlike men's mystical experiences which commonly follow the "conversion" paradigm, women's spiritual experiences more often take the form of an "awakening." Since images of feminine transformation are not available in traditional theological literature , Christ turns to modern women writers of fiction and poetry for her "sacred texts." This study, unfortunately, takes a rather long time to get started. Christ's "Preface," claiming the authority of experience over learned tradition, is a genuinely interesting but too detailed account of the author's personal religious experiences. However, after a rather wordy and, at times, simplistic chapter on the "sacred" dimensions of women's literature, Chapter Two presents a fascinating survey of traditional definitions of male spiritual quests and proposes a distinctive form for women's quests, the stages of which Christ identifies as the experience of nothingness, followed by a mystical awakening to the inner powers of being, and culminating in a new, integrative naming of self and world. In the remaining chapters, Christ explores her thesis by discussing the mystical identification with nature in Chopin's The Awakening and Atwood's Surfacing, the apocalyptic vision of Lessing's The Children of Violence (perhaps Christ's strongest chapter), the imagery of sisterhood and transcendence in Rich's Diving into the Wreck and The Dream of a Common Language, and the "god in myself" in Ntozake Shange's choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. The concluding chapter covers contemporary feminist music, art, and cultural rituals that celebrate the new spiritual sisterhood of "womanenergy." Despite a general looseness and popularization of style at times, Christ's book is an important contribution to the understanding of women's spiritual experiences and literature. KATHLEEN L. NICHOLS Pittsburg State University ...