The Virgin Mother

An homage to Gisèle Pelicot

She is the ordinary woman living next door, and he is the ordinary man. An ordinary couple. Nothing remarkable. Family people. Parents. Grandparents. Ordinary. Except in the deep and the dark, where nothing is what it seems.

Women tell stories that are hard to believe. Stories of angels and rapists who come in the night, in the deep and the dark, seeding their bodies with glory or shame. Nobody believes us. She was asking for it. Seventy and more men who came in the night? An impregnating angel? A virgin mother who becomes the God-bearer? It’s not true. She must have been asking for it.

But shame has changed sides. The woman’s shame has become her wounded and sorrowful glory. The men’s impunity has become their history of shame.

During an online discussion with Polish Catholic feminists this week (yes, such women exist and they are Poland’s unacknowledged prophets and saints), we turned to discussing the virgin birth and female sexuality. I’ve studied the Virgin Mary for nearly forty years, which some might regard as the most useless imaginable field of academic research, but she opened doors into glorious dabblings in Lacanian psychoanalysis, medieval art, and women’s reproductive struggles and sorrows. During that discussion this week, I had an epiphany. The Virgin Mother is the woman for whom sexuality and motherhood are neither possession nor self-sacrifice, but an intricate weaving together of self and other—the “I” and the “Thou”—without sacrifice or loss to either. The womanly subject does not dissolve into maternal or sexual otherness but retains within herself a reconciled duality. She is capable of bearing herself and her beloved ones with dignity and without loss of identity. She is the Virgin Mother of the Women of the World. She is Gisèle Pelicot, transforming shame into courage and casting off a history of blame stretching back to Eve.

Shame has changed sides.

Here is an extract from Gisèle’s speech outside the court where her husband and other rapists were found guilty and given prison sentences:

This trial was a very difficult ordeal. I think first of all of my three children, David, Caroline and Florian. I also think of my grandchildren because they are the future and it is also for them that I have led this fight, as well as my daughters-in-law Aurore and Céline. I also think of all the other families affected by this tragedy.

Finally, I think of the unrecognized victims whose stories often remain in the shadows. I want you to know that we share the same fight.

"I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all the people who supported me throughout this ordeal. Your testimonies have upset me and I have drawn from them the strength to come back every day. Long days of hearings. …

I wanted, by opening the doors of this trial on September 2, that society could take hold of the debates that took place there.

I have never regretted this decision. I now have confidence in our ability to collectively seize a future in which each woman and man can live in harmony with respect and mutual understanding. I thank you.

In the early Church, some Christian women became eager martyrs, because they regarded death as more noble than rape. St Augustine used the story of the rape of Lucretia to argue that they were misguided. Here is what he wrote:

This, then, is our position, and it seems sufficiently lucid. We maintain that when a woman is violated while her soul admits no consent to the iniquity, but remains inviolably chaste, the sin is not hers, but his who violates her.

Shame had changed sides, but nobody noticed, until now.

This Christmas, Gisèle Pelicot tells us it’s time to wake up, to be alert to the men who would drug us into submission and shame with their projections and lies. She raises her voice on behalf of “the unrecognized victims whose stories often remain in the shadows”.

Gisèle retained the name Pelicot throughout the trial, because she wanted her grandchildren to be proud of the name they bore. She has now gone back to her unmarried name. The BBC refers to it as her “maiden name”. Perhaps that anachronistic term is appropriate for once. It makes me think of a beautiful 14th century hymn:

Middle English original

I syng of a mayden
That is makeles,
king of alle kinges
to here sone che chees.

He cam also stille
Ther his moder was
As dew in Aprylle,
That fallyt on the gras.

He cam also stille
To his modres bowr
As dew in Aprylle,
That falleth on the flowr.

He cam also stille
Ther his moder lay
As dew in Aprylle,
That falleth on the spray.

Moder & mayden
Was nevere noon but she:
Well may swich a lady
Godes moder be.


Modern English version

I sing of a maiden
That is matchless,
King of all kings
For her son she chose.

He came as still
Where his mother was
As dew in April
That falls on the grass.

He came as still
To his mother’s bower
As dew in April
That falls on the flower.

He came as still
Where his mother lay
As dew in April
That falls on the spray.

Mother and maiden
There was never, ever one but she;
Well may such a lady
God’s mother be.

Mother and maiden. Gisèle, using her married name to make her children proud, reclaiming her maiden name to become whoever she must now learn to be, in the face of unthinkable betrayal and sorrow. The mater dolorosa.

In the Christmas story, we underestimate the power of women’s naming. In patriarchal cultures, fathers name children, but mothers are given the task of naming John the Baptist and Jesus. When women reclaim the power to name, those held hostage by patriarchy are given a voice. The chains are broken. The power to name is restored. The mother becomes the maiden once again. She reclaims the title deeds to her own body, her own life.

There may be women who have never experienced the shame of sexual abuse, but I suspect there are very few. By the time we reach adolescence, most of us, however naïve, have encountered the old man’s wandering hand, the penis dribbling out of the unzipped flies, the affectionate hug that did not feel affectionate. Some have experienced far worse. I remember a whispered conversation with a friend—dark secrets shared between single beds in my little bedroom late at night, about what men do in the deep and the dark. She dreaded going to stay with her older sister, because her brother-in-law repeatedly raped her. Of course, we told no one. We were adolescent girls, thirteen years old. Life had already groomed us to silently bear the shame of abuse. Shame had not yet changed sides.

The Virgin Mother redeems the world with her defiant courage. She insists on the visit of the angel who offers redemption, not shame. Another beautiful medieval carol tells of how all of nature conspired to defend her against Joseph’s accusations.

The grandmother insists that the visit of the seventy plus rapists left her inviolate but mired them in shame. These are women hewn from the same rock, graced with the same courage.

This is the Christmas story. The story of the Virgin Mother who will not be shamed by the story she tells, standing naked and proud before the gaze of the world.

Merci, Gisèle Pelicot.