Table Of ContentINSURRECTION IN RED INK: THE LITERARY MURDER OF
A 20TH CENTURY GODDESS
Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this
dissertation is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory
committee. This dissertation does not include proprietary or
classified information.
__________________________________________
Katharyn M. Privett
Certificate of Approval:
_______________________________ ______________________________
Michelle Sidler Jonathan Bolton, Chair
Associate Professor Assistant Professor
English English
_______________________________ ______________________________
Patrick Morrow Stephen L. McFarland
Professor Acting Dean
English Graduate School
INSURRECTION IN RED INK: THE LITERARY MURDER OF
A 2OTH CENTURY GODDESS
Katharyn M. Privett
A Dissertation
Submitted to
the Graduate Faculty of
Auburn University
in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the
Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Auburn Alabama
August 7, 2006
INSURRECTION IN RED INK: THE LITERARY MURDER OF
A 2OTH CENTURY GODDESS
Katharyn M. Privett
Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its
discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense.
The author reserves all publication rights.
_______________________________
Signature of Author
_______________________________
Date of Graduation
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VITA
Katharyn Michelle Privett, daughter of Marshia Hewitt and Carl Smith, Jr., was
born on April 4th, 1966, in Athens, Alabama. She graduated from Auburn University
with a Bachelor of Arts in English degree in August, 2000, and graduated from Auburn
University with a Master(cid:146)s Degree in English in December, 2002. She graduated in
August, 2006, from Auburn University with a Doctor of Philosophy degree, and
specializes in 20th Century American Literature, Feminist Theory, and Rhetorical Theory.
Her research is primarily focused upon maternal issues and goddess iconography. She
has taught English courses at Auburn University since the Fall of 2000, and became an
instructor in the English Department in the Fall of 2005. Katharyn has three children,
ages 10, 14, and 20 years, who have inspired her both academically and spiritually.
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DISSERTATION ABSTRACT
INSURRECTION IN RED INK: THE LITERARY MURDER OF
A 2OTH CENTURY GODDESS
Katharyn M. Privett
Doctor of Philosophy, August 7, 2006
(M.S., Auburn University, 2002)
(B.S., Auburn University, 2000)
245 Typed Pages
Directed by Jonathan Bolton
The 20th century literary archetype of the Maternal Goddess had its most locatable
beginnings in the late Victorian landscape of poetry and prose. Although goddess
imagery had been historically manipulated to serve Victorian sensibilities, its
morphology can be traced back to the rise of Christianity and patriarchy. Victorians,
such as Coventry Patmore and John Ruskin, reappropriated the Maternal Goddess image
to include angelic and queenly characteristics, specifically within the domestic sphere.
Yet, by inscribing the Maternal Goddess upon the written page, these authors opened up
the archetype to further interpretation within the early 20th Century.
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Modern authors, both English and American, worked to disengage the Maternal
Goddess from the physicality of womanhood by situating the maternal essence of
femininity as an unviable, and even detrimental, state of being. Negotiating between
foundational truth systems, the writers of the early 20th century laid bare the binary
relationship between maternity and creativity. The later authors of the Modern period
fragmented those conditions within the unitary frame of womanhood, creating a new and
radical amaternal female within fiction which reflected a specifically patriarchal anxiety
at the demise of the Maternal Goddess.
As the later 20th century gave way to Postmodernism, the women writers of the
time effectively overthrew the reign of the Maternal Goddess. Depicting maternal
essence to be a dystopic and phantasmatic myth of institutionalized motherhood, these
authors lay to waste the romanticized mythology of the Maternal Goddess. As
Postmodern authors were also in literary conversation with the opposing premises of
feminism, specifically essentialism and constructivism, the late 20th century became a site
of contestation over the feminine body. In effect, both literature and theory became the
markers of the end of an era that valorized the Maternal Goddess and policed women as
her rightful commonwealth. The end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries
have resurrected, through the forum of popular culture and feminist theology, the goddess
archetype in pre-patriarchal forms. This resurrection is evidence of a possible
renaissance in culture, literature, and theory that reclaims the feminine body as both
sacred and powerful for the women of the 3rd millennium.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the committee for their diligence and support, and
their constant willingness to traverse the rocky terrain of feminism. Thanks are also due
to mother, Marshia Hewitt, for her editorial ear as the drafts progressed, and parents Carl
and Linda Smith who went to great lengths to ensure adequate preparatory time toward
the completion of this dissertation. Special thanks are given to Dr. Robin E. Bates,
without whom this work would not have had the benefit of a muse, and to the author(cid:146)s
children, Christian, Zachariah, and Jacob, for their undying faith in a mother who could
write. This work is dedicated to the memory of Sergeant Edward Brian Hewitt and his
unwavering belief that dreamers always win.
The author insures that no children were harmed in any way during the
construction of this dissertation.
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Style manual of journal used: MLA Publication Style with Footnotes
Computer software used: Microsoft Word
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION: BACK TO THE BEGINNING 1
2. CHAPTER I: THE COUP D‘ETAT OF A GODDESS 25
3. CHAPTER II: ESSENTIALLY SPEAKING 59
4. CHAPTER III: ON THEIR KNEES: THE RISE OF THE AMATERNAL 106
5. CHAPTER IV: DYSTOPIC BODIES AND ENSLAVED MOTHERHOOD 149
6. CONCLUSION: SACRED CYBORGS AND 21ST CENTURY GODDESSES 186
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY 228
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INTRODUCTION: BACK TO THE BEGINNING
(cid:147)Mine is a tale about the Goddess as she was in ages past, as she continues to be
in many parts of the world today, and as she is reemerging in late twentieth-century
Western Culture.(cid:148) Elinor W. Gadon, The Once and Future Goddess, 1989.
This study takes up the legacy of a historically misappropriated Maternal Goddess
in literature, and traces her demise to the writing subjects of the Twentieth Century.
What is a Maternal Goddess? The answer is as complicated and ambiguous as the
definition of (cid:147)patriarchy,(cid:148) for within the term there lies history, religion, politics, and
complex ideologies that never quite agree with each other. Yet, the amorphous nature of
the Maternal Goddess myth does not erase its existence. Elinor W. Gadon, in her work
The Once and Future Goddess, speaks to the difficulty of defining the deity, finding that
(cid:147)When I tell people that I am writing about the Goddess, they inevitably ask, Which
one?(cid:148) While Gadon admits the cryptic nature of her work, she is adamant about the
validity of goddess study, finding that (cid:147)While the Goddess has indeed had many names,
many manifestations throughout human history, she is ultimately one supreme reality.(cid:148)1
Early mythologies of goddess cults can be found literally everywhere: India, Egypt,
1 Elinor W. Gadon, The Once and Future Goddess: A Symbol for Our Time (New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1989), xii.
1
