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The Virgin Mary Chivalry Gynocentrism Amp Feminismnbsp1897
The Virgin Mary Chivalry Gynocentrism Amp Feminismnbsp1897
The Virgin Mary Chivalry Gynocentrism Amp Feminismnbsp1897
feminism (1897)
gynocentrism.com/2018/03/07/the-virgin-mary-chivalry-gynocentrism-feminism-1897
In the below article penned in 1897, a Mrs. Marion Reedy held that widespread veneration
of Mary encouraged the pedestalization of women, gave birth to the chivalrous gentlemen,
and was responsible for the “New Woman” of feminism:
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“The church it was that built up the modern ideal of woman. The church it was that cultivated,
so to speak, chastity, by its insistence that the creature who had borne a God was worthy of
veneration, and was not to be only an utensil in ministration to male passion. Not only was
man indoctrinated with a higher idea of woman, but women became possessed of a higher,
better sense of their own worthiness.
There is no love poem in the world that equals the Litany of the Virgin, composed by the
celibates of the church, and all that is ethereal and spiritual in modem love’s expression is to
be found in the beautiful titles whereby the Virgin Mother has been supplicated for centuries.
This idealization, not to say idolization, of woman could not but have its effect upon men and
women in a time when the church was supreme, and so we see, as woman is more and more
recognized for her worth & her value in the scheme of things, coming down the centuries,
woman’s ideas gradually changing the heart of the world. As civilization progressed, cruelty
was put away. This was the influence of woman.
The gradual growth into life, out of religion, of the reverence for Mary manifested itself in the
development of chivalry, and then, when chivalry, its ends accomplished, passed away, in the
development of what we now know as the gentleman.
The church has upheld Mary consistently as the type of sacred womanhood and, by its
influence upon the minds of men, has brought about a general attitude toward all women as if
they partake of some of her mystical attributes of worthiness and even of divinity. Ave
Maria!
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