117. Ibid., 43.
118. Ibid., 48.
119. Ibid., 69.
120. Ibid., 248.
121. GCG, 18
122. RK, 25.
123. PH, 308.
124. Ibid., 313.
125. Ibid., 325.
126. Ibid., 330.
127. Ibid.
128. IBR, 99.
129. Ibid., 106.
130. Ibid., 97.
131. PH, 7.
132. Ibid.
133. PH, 6.
134. Ibid.
135. Ibid., 6–7.
136. Ibid., 6.
137. Ibid., 250.
138. Ibid., 337.
139. FSG, 199.
140. WWH, 51.
141. WG, 29.
142. IGS, 140–41.
143. IS, 130.
144. DH, 19.
145. Ibid., 23.
146. Ibid.
147. PH, 313.
148. WWH, 51.
149. IJN.
150. PH, 313.
151. Ibid., 183.
152. IJN.
153. FSG, 21.
154. IJN.
155. IBR, 97.
156. FSG, 132.
157. Ibid., 4.
158. Smith, Poetics of Women’s Autobiography, 16.
159. BMN, 56.
160. Ibid., 214–15.
161. Cixous, Coming to Writing, 6.
162. DJ, 28.
163. Ibid., 30.
164. BJ, 227.
165. PH, 14.
166. Sands, Escape from Paradise, 167.
2
Visitation
Reading and Writing Encounters
As discussed in chapter 1, in this book I envisage both my own self-narration and that of the writers I engage with as ‘annunciation,’ inspired by Michèle Roberts and Sara Maitland’s reimagining of this New Testament story. In their presentations of the annunciation, Mary’s act of creativity is self-contained, independent, solitary. Thus, as a feminist theological way of thinking about literature, it is incomplete. What is needed is a sense of the communality of women’s writing; that stories are generated by and through relationships; that we make stories for other people as well as ourselves.
For this I turn to the following episode in Luke’s account of Mary the mother of Jesus: her visit to her cousin Elizabeth, also miraculously pregnant, her story also not listened to or believed by those around her. Encountering Mary, Elizabeth feels the child in her womb leaping for joy; she declares Mary “blessed among women” (Luke 1:41–4). Encountering Elizabeth, Mary utters the words of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55), after two thousand years still recited daily in evening prayer: “my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour . . . He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.”
In this chapter, I take the image of the visitation as representative of the creative power of encounter with other women, reading