The Virgin Mary embodies life-nurturing functions denied to women as creators

Evidence

Most of the feminine attributes we have referred to are found in these invocations. The Virgin is fertility, dew, and the source of life; many of the images show her at the well, the spring, or the fountain; the expression “Fountain of Life” was one of the most common; she was not a creator, but she nourishes, she brings to the light of day what was hidden in the earth. She is the deep reality hidden under the appearance of things: the Core, the Marrow. Through her, passions are tempered; she is what is given to man to satiate him. Wherever life is threatened, she saves and restores it: she heals and strengthens. And because life emanates from God, she as the intermediary between man and life is likewise the intermediary between humanity and God. “The devil’s gateway,” said Tertullian. But transfigured, she is heaven’s portal; paintings represent her opening the gate or the window onto paradise or raising a ladder from earth to the heavens. More straightforward, she becomes an advocate, pleading beside her Son for the salvation of men: many tableaux of the Last Judgment have her baring her breast in supplication to Christ in the name of her glorious motherhood. She protects men’s children in the folds of her cloak; her merciful love follows them through dangers over oceans and battlefields. She moves Divine Justice in the name of charity: the “Virgins of the Scales” are seen, smiling, tilting the balance where souls are weighed to the side of the Good. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 395

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the archetype of the nourishing, intermediary woman-who-is-not-the-source — echo of woman as mediator in later feminist theology critiques (e.g. Daly, Ruether), and to the ‘goddess without creative power’ framing. — connects to: The Virgin Mary replaced goddesses with a male-serving image of woman — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 367; Exalting woman spiritually sanctions her earthly subordination rather than liberating her — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 591; The virgin birth was read as female self-sufficiency, needing no male intercession
• QUESTION: Beauvoir puts Tertullian’s ‘devil’s gateway’ inside Mary’s orbit — worth tracing the full curve from Eve-as-damnation to Mary-as-salvation in patristic writing.

Broader Connections

• Exalting woman spiritually sanctions her earthly subordination rather than liberating her #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 591