Spirituality in different forms
Reviewed by lizw
Carol Lee Flinders, At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst
(HarperCollins, 2007, Mobipocket edition, ISBN 9780061548307.)
Flinders explicitly looks at the connection between feminism and women’s spirituality – and particularly the spiritual and psychological development of girls – that is implicit in Fell (below). She identifies four themes which together are symptomatic of the tension between feminism and traditional women’s spirituality (focusing primarily on the Hindu-inspired tradition that she herself practises and the Christian tradition she studies professionally: (lack of) voice, enclosure, self-emptying and (redirection of) desire. I found that quite a helpful framework, and I liked her comment on synchronicity, which reminded me rather of Rose in New Who leaving Bad Wolf messages to herself all along the timeline: When a message wants to move from the unconscious to the conscious level… something in us manages to paint it across the very landscape, where we can’t help but read it, and we draw from that reading the courage to strike out into the wilderness… She has a good turn of phrase sometimes. I also liked her idea that “sorting chores” in fairy tales like Cinderella represent contradictory inner impulses that the protagonist needs to resolve. Apart from that, I found this rather typical feminist fare, not saying much that hadn’t already been said when I was studying theology in the late 1980s. There was also some disappointing intersectionality fail around issues of sexuality, appropriation and romanticisation of other cultures. It also needs a trigger warning for extended mentions of child abuse and child death.
Alison Fell, The Bad Box
(London: Virago, 1987, ISBN 0860684032).
My mother passed this on to me after a bout of decluttering. She was at school with Alison Fell, and about half the book is set in a Borders town much like the one they grew up in; it was odd to recognise events that are clearly based on incidents from their schooldays that I had previously heard from her. It’s a portrayal of the inner pressures on a group of girls reaching adolescence in the late 1950s, and – at least based on my mother’s accounts – I suspect it is far more accurate in its portrayal of that era than Mantel’s book below. Spirituality is not discussed overtly, but it is definitely present as an undertone, heard most clearly in the recurring rumours of a white hind around the Highland village which provides the setting for the other half of the book and in the mythlike story the main character daydreams for herself as she struggles to process what she is feeling. Fell reproduces the tone of recorded Scottish legends very accurately in these passages. I thought the Highland sections captured the feel of the remoter parts of Scotland quite evocatively, but found it harder to recognise in the Border setting the kind of town my mother describes growing up in; she clearly has more positive memories of it than Fell does.
Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, tr. Ilse Lasch
(Boston: Beacon, 1959-2006, Kindle edition).
Frankl, who survived a series of concentration camps, writes about the experience from his professional point of view as a psychologist. I read it because I’d seen some interesting comments about his secular form of spirituality and the form of therapy he developed, based on his theory that most modern mental illness is caused by an underlying sense of meaninglessness. I found it interesting and moving, but ultimately didn’t get as much out of it as I’d expected from reviews. The section on his psychological methods is not detailed enough, and the explanation of his theory on meaning uses a great deal of religious metaphor, making it difficult to generalise. I got quite excited about the first few chapters, but ultimately, I’m not sure it adds a great deal to, say, Richard Holloway’s books from a philosophical or spiritual point of view, though Frankl’s concentration camp experience does give the question of meaning an urgency which Holloway’s writing tends to lack.
Hilary Mantel, Fludd
(London: Penguin, 1989, ISBN not given).
In a 1950s Roman Catholic parish somewhere in Yorkshire, the parish priest no longer believes in God, but draws strength from the ritual trappings of the tradition, as do his flock. This puts him at odds with the bishop, who wants to modernise. Into the middle of the conflict arrives a new curate, whose loyalties and even identity are mysterious. At first I thought Mantel was aiming for a somewhat grotesque humour or possibly even something in the style of Tom Holt, but as the novel went on I was increasingly reminded of Brian Moore, which felt like an odd transition. Moore’s abbot from Catholics would find a kindred spirit in Mantel’s parish priest, whom I found quite moving at times. Overall, though, I think Moore’s writing is more powerful, and Mantel would have done better not to try to mix the humour with the pathos.
