Virginity Revisited: Configurations of the Unpossessed Body (review)

This book of essays originated in a conference at the University of Western Ontario in 1998 and consists of revised contributions to that gathering, plus some added later. The nine chapters range in subject from Greek antiquity through ancient Rome and European history up to a novel by Margaret Atwood. Female virginity has long been a symbol of familial, social, or national integrity and purity. The virgin has power and creates desire. Thus, although the essays range over such a large time span, they are united by this central issue of controlling or determining the state of female bodies. Together the chapters – all well written –provide a fascinating panorama of men’s fascination with female sexual status.

Bonnie MacLachlan reviews this panorama in her clear and interesting introduction to the subject. She begins with a brief comment on contemporary society, including the idea of recovering one’s virginity (as a modern movement espouses), then comments on the power of virginity, both as stored energy available to a husband in marriage and as a form of independence from male control. Virginity, she stresses, is a social construct.

First come the Greeks. Eleanor Irwin investigates virgin goddesses in Greek myth and their connection to water, hearth, and fertility. A virgin goddess such as Artemis, for instance, was also called on to help in childbirth. Judith Fletcher looks at three tragedies of Aeschylus that include a chorus of young unmarried women. These choruses represent female figures in public space, contesting men’s power to curb them. Fletcher links their resistance to their in-between state and sees in the plays a process of yielding to male authority that initiates them into adult status. Ann Hanson, known for her studies of Greek medical writers, explores the ancient doctors’ views of the pubescent female. They thought that she could maintain health only if she submitted to intercourse and pregnancy. Hanson gives a lively description of the doctors’ model of female insides and several recorded case histories, then points out changed views in Roman medical writers.

Holt Parker takes us to Rome and the Vestal Virgins who guarded the city hearth. Parker draws on cultural anthropology to show that theirs was a ‘magical virginity,’ an embodiment of Roman safety and health. At times of turmoil a Vestal Virgin could be accused of unchastity and become a scapegoat. She was buried alive in what amounted to a form of human sacrifice.

Two essays focus on the Virgin Mary. Kate Cooper calls attention to the importance for Christian theology of women’s view of Mary in late antiquity: she was both virgin and ‘Mother of God.’ Cooper draws on ‘narrative psychology’ to show that Mary provided a model for married women, while devotion to Mary united women across classes and allowed some women to claim authoritative roles. Jennifer Sutherland analyzes the poetic work Marie Carmina by Walter of Wimborne, a thirteenth-century cleric who found Mary more approachable than the Father. His language is sensuous, child-like, and violent by turns as he contemplates her story.

Also on Christianity, Ilse Friesen discusses a remarkable image of the crucified, bearded virgin St Wilgefortis. Her image was interchangeable with that of the robed Christ on the cross and may have originated as a misinterpretation of the latter. Her cult became popular throughout Europe from 1400 on, especially (but not only) among women. Friesen suggests that she represents the mingling of genders found also in visions of the crucified Christ. Thomas Lennon calls attention to Pierre-Daniel Huet, a seventeenth-century bishop who defended the idea of the virgin birth by appealing to pagan stories of miraculous births, for truth resides in tradition. This controversial view takes virginity as non-physical.

Finally, Anne Geddes Bailey writes about Margaret Atwood’s novel Alias Grace. She gives a clear and fascinating reading of a complex novel, focusing on the heroine’s teasingly failing quite to ‘remember’ an episode that would reveal whether she is...