Stephanie Golden > Quotes

“Bess has been in a mental hospital but is really a holy fool who dialogues with God. She develops a wild sexual passion for her husband, Jan, and when a terrible injury makes him a quadriplegic, she sets off on a series of self-sacrificial sexual escapades with other men, for Jan has said that her telling him about these encounters will keep him alive. “I don’t make love with them, I make love with Jan and it saves him from dying,” she explains. Growing increasingly reckless, she is fatally stabbed by a vicious group of men on a boat. At the inquest her doctor explains that he would describe her not as “neurotic” or “psychotic” but as “good.” And Jan, who has been near death, appears at her funeral, much recovered; later, he walks.”
― Stephanie Golden, Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice

“Sacrifice, of course, is a time-honored way to achieve salvation. In true spiritual sacrifice, the individual self merges directly into an authentic, impersonal source of goodness; the secular version may involve dedication to some work or service perceived as greater than the self. But if, like the mermaid, one simply hands the self over to another limited human being, one sacrifices it without transcending or achieving anything. One does achieve a delusion of transcendence—a voluptuous feeling of noble martyrdom. But this type of martyrdom does not have noble consequences.”
― Stephanie Golden, Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice

“In appropriate sacrifice, the self maintins a solicitude for itself amid caring for others. It also feels a strong connection to other people. Growing out of the balance between caring for self and other simultaneously, it can accept other people as they are.”
― Stephanie Golden, Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice

“Self-sacrifice is a power issue: inappropriate sacrifice is self-defeating and even destructive because it causes you to lose your power.”
― Stephanie Golden, Mermaid No More: Breaking Women's Culture of Sacrifice

“the impulse toward excessive self sacrifice comes from women's history, not their nature. The reason self-sacrifice seems so natural for women in Western culture is that centuries ago, we were handed the role of sacrificing and suffering for the benefit of the entire society—and we’re still doing it.”
― Stephanie Golden, Mermaid No More: Breaking Women's Culture of Sacrifice