Athenameilahn > Recent Status Updates

Rey’s dad realizes R is gay-1st person to & loves him unconditionally, cries a bit even w concern. That’s not toxic!

Rey’s dad’s stuff an alter to toxic masc. why??! Liking motorcycles, army, rock music, bbq not inherently toxic!

Fetishization of parenthood

-You can’t fuck up your kids by choosing the wrong stroller or formula feeding
-there’s an agenda
—scaring parents through experts makes $$ on their books, webinars, etc
—power ideology La Leche League founded by Catholic women who thought woke she stay at home and Dr. Sears-founder of attachment parenting-sexist evangelical Christian who thinks wife is subservient to husband

In the last dozen pages or so Marie refers to god as a woman. Just noticed Groff doesn’t use God but instead uses god. I like it.

Cecily returns (M’s childhood servant & friend who she was intimate with). Points out that her ugliness is the source of her wealth and greatness. A beautiful or even Ave girl would have been married off, given birth & prob died in obscurity decades earlier than 72. She was unmarriable so sent to the abbey and there flourished. More than than most nobles. More power than most women.

M changes the Latin in the missals to the feminine since it is only spoken/heard by women. “Slashing women into the texts feels wi Jed. It is fun.”

Many nuns are outraged at M assuming sacraments and hearing confessions. They are becoming mutinous. But she bears confessions from the nuns who tell stories of rape & abuse & they wouldn’t have unburdened themselves to a man (priest) only to a woman (her). Without confession their souls wouldn’t have been cleansed. So it’s fortunate she is doing this.

M increasingly isolated the women & is more independent. After a vision & a fire that kills those qualified to do sacraments (all outsiders) she assumes sacerdotal duties an d further avoids men. Another serious action defying the church & its foundation of toxic masc.

Eleanor gives M a seal so she can close letters herself w/o also checking with prioress or sub. That is privacy and allows private inner thoughts. Which are totally discouraged. Even reading is done aloud to discourage critical thinking. M is carrying on the tradition. Would be dangerous to have another like her. Ignorance protects her daughters & their Eden.

Eleanor finally visits. She says the labyrinth is see. As an act of aggression. Women who refuse to be available are subversive and rebellious.

By building a labyrinth around the abbey her daughters will be safe from the dangers & corrupting world. It would be an island of women.

M, 47 and the abbess now, has a vision of the Virgin Mary. Returns to her senses among her “daughters.” She writes it down and resolved to build a labyrinth. ((The religiosity isn’t super sudden but is still a bit jolting.))

3 villeinesses are pregnant, not nuns, not celibate but still scandalous. Another nun had to explain puberty to M. M decided to make the abbey and first women only including servants. All others must leave. She’ll establish an almonry and hostelery on the outskirts. Boys can stay with villeinesses until 12, then must leave. “It is not a sin to be born not female.”

Pg 80 M thinks of Cecile and how it’s been 2 decades since she felt love (sex/passion). Needs a tooth pulled and Nest (infermatrix) takes it out, then performs oral sex on her. M is ashamed but Nest says it just another way of expressing (getting out) humors, like bloodletting. Some buns need it more than others. So medicinal so not a sin.

Eleanor is kidnapped and taken to England which she hates. Close to Marie. M is joyful at first-she is now free and the mistress of her own lands with estates and servants while E is stuck in a cage.

Marie is recruiting girls you have not just wealth but also “intelligence or vast strength or family knowledge; …who have absorbed from the family businesses glassblowing, cobbling…, who can learn languages, who will grow to be powerful nuns or female merchants…or marry higher than their stations and become among M’s host of spies…in the rooms of quiet power throughout Europe.”

-Women are vulnerable-only their reputation can save them from being crushed ((but it is easily crushable))
-Eleanor has walls around walls and outermost is her reputation which she pays a lot to protect. Marie vows to make the convent and her role there like the court and yourself into an Eleanor

M resolved to write a collection of lais to send E as an expression of love that will result in forgiveness and a return to the court

Marie’s mother an aunts ((described in a rather Amazonian way)) are on a crusade with the Queen’s Ladies’ Army. Marie meets Eleanor as a young girl when she enters E’s cabin, maybe to kill the man who raped her mother (who is E’s lover-she’s not in her marital tent). 1st time M met E and now E is her true love. M is crushed that E has sent her to the misery of the convent.

Other nuns are spreading rumors about the rape that resulted in Marie. Her fam is described as strong, brave, intelligent, opinionated speaking 8 dialects +Greek & Arabic. But unwomanly. The speaker says smugly that SHE is quite feminine and therefore = worthy

Intimacy between Marie & her maid Cecily-lesbian on top of other kinds of otherness

Juxtaposition-numerous references to maiden but also she is a giantess, clumsy, clods around, 3 heads too tall, massive hands, deep voice, not at all feminine so who would marry her?

Catholicism doesn’t sit well w Marie. “Her faith had twisted very early in her childhood; it would slowly grow ever more bent into its geometry until it was its own angular, majestic thing.”

Her half sister like her, a bastardess sibling of the crown

Britain tried to quell the slave uprising in Haiti but had to retreat. At one point the British army used thousands of slaves to fight the battle to control H. More British soldiers died trying to take over Saint Domingue than the American Revolutionary War. But no remembrance of their sacrifice, “marking yet another act of historical silencing in this symphony of erasure.”

St Domingue voraciously consumed slaves. Needed to import from older British colonies like Jamaica with successful Maroons. African religions were forbidden but many were Catholic or at least familiar with it and used it to forge powerful alliances. Which prob precipitated the rev there. Dutty Boukmann (THAT Boukmann/vodou) had escaped from Jamaica (I never knew that!!)

Lots of evidence suggesting the French rev inspired the Haitian rev, but also the wealth generated by slavery and the richness of Nantes, Bordeaux, Le Havre, etc also might have inspired the French rev.

1811 Charles Deslondes led a slave rebellion around NOLA, the biggest slave rebellion in the US. It was defeated. The longest scholarly account of the rebellion is only 24 pgs. Shows forgetfulness and especially erasure, esp in the hands of the lucrative plantation tourism industry.

In the Caribb the plantation work was brutal so life expectancy was low & there was no time to develop cohesion-everyone was still “African”. In the US Mississippi Valley cotton plantations were a bit easier, slaves lived longer and had children so replaced their parents (they became known as Creoles= born on American soil.)