The Woman's Tale/Diving Deep and Surfacing

...Next, the telling of the story...

...Christ begins with a distinction between the spiritual quest-"woman's awakening to the depths of her soul [used in a non-dualistic sense ] and her position in the universe" -and the social quest - "woman's struggle to gain respect, equality and freedom in society-in work, in politics, and in relationships with women, men and children...

...DITING DEEP AND SURFACING WOMEN WRITERS ON SPIRITUAL QUEST Carol P. Christ Beacon, $9.95,159 pp...

...patience, never commenting on the violence and grotesqueness of the ending, in which the only way the girl can be rid of the red shoes and stop dancing is to have her feet chopped off...

...Francine Cardman HOW to tell the untold stories of women...

...her discussion of Atwood's Surfacing is compelling...

...Its perspective on women's experience and their need to tell their own stories is clear, and clearly concerned with women...

...Simply because women are analyzing and reflecting on these stories, therefore, does not make for a "woman's tale...

...Compelling questions, questions that touch one deeply, questions that moved these three women to words, to writing, and finally to these books...

...The sort of generality one might expect from the title does not emerge, nor is there a satisfying particularity, for the tale as they tell it could, except for occasional detail or observations, as well be "the man's tale...

...Her explanation of why Rich's "homesickness for a woman, for ourselves" is important for heterosexual women (and men) is perceptive...

...Similarly with Neill...

...First, the terms...

...When theological connections are made (as they sometimes are, much too lightly and occasionally inappropriately), they are often simply transpositions of one set of categories into the other...

...and "what do I hate/ dislike about being a woman...

...And her treatment of For Colored Girls reveals a sensitivity to the connections and disconnections between racism and sexism, black and white women's experience...

...In the actual analysis of the stories, it becomes clear that the book is not basically about women or their experience as women...

...What is the story that they tell, and how well do they tell it...

...How to bring the experience of women to consciousness, to reflection, to'articulation, to freedom...

...Each author begins with an introductory description of herself, answering such questions as, "what do I love/like about being a woman...

...The vision of the spiritual journey as Chervin and Neill describe it is too individual, too inner, and too isolated- and too dependent on therapeutic insights from counseling and psychology...

...How to fathom the depths of women's being...

...yet she hopes for a future wholeness for humankind, female and male...

...and "grassroots spirituality...

...Its purposes are sharply delimited, its conceptual categories consciously chosen and carefully defined, and the "stories" it analyzes are by and about women- novels, poetry, choreopoem...

...In writing about the story of "The Red Shoes," for instance, Chervin relates her fascination with this tale and the significant impulsivity vs...

...I found her insight into the differences between women's and men's experience of nothingness and awakening striking...

...For, as Carol Christ observes, "Women have lived in the interstices between their own vaguely understood experience and the shapings given to experience by the stories of men...

...nor does she consider why this is often the fate of women who disrupt the social order, who can't be controlled, indeed, who cannot control themselves (who are not free...

...Carol Christ's exploration of the spiritual quest of women writers (Kate Chopin, Margaret At wood, Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich, Ntozake Shange) is both literary and cultural criticism...

...The reasons for this approach, as well as its consequences, are apparent early on...

...And so they treat of archetypes (or near-archetypes) rather than the concrete experience of women...

...But her non-theistic description of spirituality and its relationship to storytelling is carefully worked out and rings true...

...Neither notices that the stories of women which they discuss (fairy tales, for the most part) have been written by men...

...By calling their exploration of stories in which women figure "the woman's tale," Chervin and Neill seem to claim a kind of universality for the abstract picture of woman that they discern in these tales...

...The final chapter, on a vision of women's culture, is too summary and tries to do too much, even while it corroborates Christ's analysis by connecting it to movements in women's music, art...

...This lack of perspective and perception is what makes The Woman's Tale so unsatisfactory to me...

...Her post-Christian and feminist perspective is apt to distress those who think of "spirituality" as an exclusively Christian affair...

...Her description of the four moments of the spiritual quest-the experience of nothingness, awakening to the great powers of being, mystical identification and insight, and new naming of self and reality-provides helpful categories for understanding the works examined...

...Christ skillfully explicates the texts she's chosen, analyzing the quest, pointing out and commenting on themes, and raising important questions about women's efforts to find an image of self-to find, as Doris Lessing wrote of Martha Quest, "that woman . . . Martha described vaguely but to her own satisfaction as 'a person.'" Christ is not afraid to be critical of images that seem less than adequate (Chopin, Lessing), nor is she grudging in appreciation, even when she cannot finally share a writer's vision (as with Rich's lesbianism...

...Her discussion of "Rapun-zel": she speaks (too easily) of "redemptive suffering" (Rapunzel's), but doesn't ask what it is between wicked witches and lovely girls that occasions such fear and hatred, that fuels the conflict between young and old, beautiful and unattractive women...

...Each takes care to dissociate herself from feminism or "the women's liberation movement," preferring to revel in being a woman and in her own personal struggles and achievements, apart from any political or philosophical commitment to women as such...

...Diving Deep and Surfacing, on the other hand is a very satisfying book...

...Women's stories have not been told.'' So begins chapter 1. By the end of chapter 8, however, it is clear that the: telling has begun at last.g has begun at last...

...Reflections on the stories thus lack any social or political analysis: no effort is made to ask what the stories are saying about women, their place in the social structure, how men regard them, what the power relationships as well as the personal relationships between women and men are like...

...And Christ never addresses directly the problematic fact that in all the works, women's quest for wholeness leads them apart from men...

...I wonder if the attitude toward abortion in Surfacing is as easily susceptible of Christ's explanation as she suggests...

...My complaints, then, are few...

...and when they address these images from their own1 particular experience, it is not primarily their experience as women out of which they speak...

...The distinction is helpful in understanding Christ's purposes in the book, but she cautions against reading it as any real separation of the spiritual and the social since they are but "two dimensions of the same struggle...

...And this is fateful, if not fatal, for their undertaking...

...Rather, the focus is on the "inner journey," the "spiritual life" or "the soul," defined and described in largely psychological and personal categories...