Thoughts+on+the+Self+(Kidd)


 * Thoughts on the //Self// **

“I would give up the unessential; I would give my money; I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself.”

- Edna Pontellier, //The Awakening// (53)

Excerpted from //The Dance of the Dissident Daughter//, by Sue Monk Kidd (1996), pp. 212-13:

As summer came, I read physician Esther Harding’s book on feminine psychology, coming upon a train of thought that at first baffled me then intrigued me. Harding spoke about a woman who may be married and have children or may have much sexual experience but is a virgin. Naturally, I wondered how a woman manages a thing like that.

Harding points out that in ancient times the word //virgin// had a different meaning than it does now. It didn’t mean being chaste or physically untouched. Rather, being a virgin meant belonging to oneself.

Being a virgin, she says, refers to ‘a //quality//, a subjective state, a psycho- logical attitude, not to a physiological or external fact.’ For a woman it means she is uncaptured or, as Harding puts it, she is ‘one-in-herself.’ *

In that context, a married woman, a mother, or any sexually experienced woman can be a virgin. It means that while she may relate fully to her partner, she does not give herself away to him or to patriarchy. She gives herself to her own soul. She is her own mistress, her own authority, her own woman.

Once when I tried to explain this to someone, she thought I meant that in being a virgin we would have no need for anyone else. But that wasn’t it at all. By now I knew how intricately connected I was. If anything, as I belonged more and more to myself, I was able to relate more deeply and truly to those in my life. The relationships became something I chose, not something I felt dependent on or trapped in.

Being one-in-myself wasn’t an aloof containment but a spiritual and psychological autonomy. It meant being whole and complete in myself and relating to others out of that soul-centeredness.

1971), p. 102.
 * Esther Harding, //Women’s Mysteries: Ancient and Modern// (NY: Harper & Row,