Matrix

Although this novel takes place in the Middle Ages—long before feminism existed as a movement—Marie is in many ways a feminist heroine. She comes from a family of “viragoes,” or fierce, opinionated women who take up the same amount of space that men do and relish traditionally male activities, such as going into battle (28). At the same time, she is softer and gentler than it is acceptable for a woman of her time and station to be. As a prioress and then an abbess, she treats the nuns around her with thoughtfulness and as individuals, rather than as an anonymous herd. Both her fierce side and her gentle side put her at odds with the male-dominated church and with the world outside the church.

The values of this church have to do not only with men’s superiority to women but also with the church’s superiority to earthly life. It offers an ascetic, self-sacrificing vision of spirituality that privileges “the Word” over the physical world (243). Those who enter the church, especially if they are women, are expected to renounce their individuality and to lead a deliberately spartan and uncomfortable existence. They are supposed to perform tasks that are difficult for them to increase their humility. Marie challenges these assumptions and in doing so makes the abbey more of a spiritual shelter. She gives the nuns tasks that suit their talents while also pushing them to do more demanding physical work. These tasks increase the nuns’ strength and confidence and give them a sense of mission and community: “A strange magic has befallen their bodies […] How swiftly the women have all been working, filled with radiance and conviction” (110). Marie also allows the nuns to take joy in their bodies and in their earthly surroundings by making the abbey an easier place to live. She expands the abbey’s grounds, harvests the lands, and allows a more varied diet for her nuns, using her own money to do so. She also allows discreet sexual encounters at the abbey and engages in such encounters herself.

The nature of Marie’s religious visions is also a feminist one. Her visions come from her body and her lived experience and often challenge traditional church doctrine. This is why Tilde burns the notebook in which Marie documented these visions after her death: “In Marie’s visions, Eve and the Virgin Mary share a kiss; god is a colossal dove hen laying the eggs of the world; Marie herself is a protector well above the power of any woman born to woman” (253). While the traditional church doctrine is one of dichotomies—between good and evil, divine life and earthly life, men and women—Marie’s vision is more holistic and unified. She sees life itself as innately holy and views goodness and wickedness as complementary qualities; this is why she is able to see Eve and the Virgin Mary—two figures who are traditionally set in opposition—as united.

As well as having a feminist heroine, Matrix can be seen to have a feminist plot. There are myriad conflicts and incidents in the novel, but it does not have the traditional—and, by extension, patriarchal—plot anchored by a single, overarching conflict, crisis, and resolution. There are, rather, many large and small conflicts, all of which receive equal weight in the novel. The changes in Marie as a character over the course of the novel, moreover, are subtle rather than dramatic. They are framed less as changes imposed from the outside than as realizations of Marie’s inward self. Although Marie inhabits a violent, conflicted world, the main drama in the novel comes not from her surroundings but from her spiritual evolution. External global events, such as religious wars and royal kidnappings, are peripheral in the novel, as are its male characters.