over the Immaculate Conception which began as early
as the seventh century lasted until Pius IX declared
it to be an article of Catholic belief in 1854.
Thus not only Christ, but also his mother became purged
of the sin of conception by natural biological processes,
and the same immaculacy and freedom from contamination
was accorded to both. In this way the final step
in the differentiation between earthly motherhood
and divine motherhood was completed.
The worship of the virgin by men and women who looked
upon the celibate life as the perfect life, and upon
the relationship of earthly fatherhood and motherhood
as contaminating, gave the world an ideal of woman
as “superhuman, immaculate, bowing in frightened
awe before the angel with the lily, standing mute
and with downcast eyes before her Divine Son."[41]
With all its admitted beauty, this ideal represented
not the institution of the family, but the institution
of the church. Chivalry carried over from the
church to the castle this concept of womanhood and
set it to the shaping of The Lady,[42] who was finally
given a rank in the ideals of knighthood only a little
below that to which Mary had been elevated by the
ecclesiastical authorities. This concept of the
lady was the result of the necessity for a new social
standardization which must combine beauty, purity,
meekness and angelic goodness. Only by such a
combination could religion and family life be finally
reconciled. By such a combination, earthly motherhood
could be made to approximate the divine motherhood.
With the decline of the influence of chivalry, probably
as the result of industrial changes, The Lady was
replaced by a feminine ideal which may well be termed
the “Model Woman.” Although less ethereal
than her predecessor, The Lady, the Model Woman is
quite as much an attempt to reconcile the dualistic
attitude, with its Divine Mother cult on the one hand,
and its belief in the essential evil of the procreative
process and the uncleanness of woman on the other,
to human needs. The characteristics of the Model
Woman must approximate those of the Holy Virgin as
closely as possible. Her chastity before marriage
is imperative. Her calling must be the high art
of motherhood. She must be the incarnation of
the maternal spirit of womanhood, but her purity must
remain unsullied by any trace of erotic passion.
A voluminous literature which stated the virtues and
duties of the Model Woman blossomed out in the latter
part of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth
century.[43] The Puritan ideals also embodied this
concept. It was by this attempt to make woman
conform to a standardized ideal that man sought to
solve the conflict between his natural human instincts
and desires and the early Christian teaching concerning
the sex life and womanhood.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER II
1. Frazer, J.G. The Golden Bough. A
Study in Magic and Religion. Part I. The Magic
Art. 2 vols. Macmillan. London, 1911.
Part V. Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild. 2 vols.
London, 1912.
