Mary, like most women in the bible, is a two-dimensional character; a womb was required, the womb was named Mary. Colm Tóibín, in his novella from 2012, aims to flesh out the character of Mary. Yes, a man seeks to do justice to the story of Mary.
The author himself is completely absent from the narrative. There is no explanation or back-story and so it is, in many ways, an exceptional retelling of a story that we already know. The environment of Jerusalem feels authentic, as well as the oppressive stalking that Mary endures from her guardians, figures who are there to ensure that she is complicit with their narrative of Jesus as the son of God. Mary eschews this interpretation of her son's provenance but does not offer any explanation for why her son is the chosen one. This, for me, is the slight failing of the text. The story begins, more or less, with the rumours of the rising again of Lazarus. When Mary herself encounters Lazurus, she notes, in her own ambiguous way, which allows for belief and scepticism:
'.. Lazarus, it was clear to me, was dying. If he had come back to life it was merely to say a last farewell to it.'
This sunset starting point is why the book is a novella. But I would have enjoyed a fictionalised account of the full life of Mary. I would have enjoyed her retelling of the birth of Christ. But to go further back would have required more dramatic licence, would have been potentially more blasphemous. So her story focusses on the final days of Jesus's life. There are times when, as readers, we feel close to a real woman. Her account of the sabbath when her son was young is strangely compelling. The quietness exerting a hypnotic stasis which would wear off as the day retreated:
'The idea that time was moving, the idea that so much of the world remained mysterious, unsettled me. But I accepted it as an inevitable aspect of a day spent looking inward. I was glad nonetheless when the shadows melted into darkness at sundown and we could talk again and I could work in the kitchen and think once more of the others and of the world outside.'
Said every woman walking back into the office after a weekend at home with her family.
It might be unfair of me but I struggled at times to take the whole premise of the book seriously. Mary is mistress of the eye-roll, her sardonic interpretation of her son's rise to prominence, at times, made me chuckle. When she finally seeks him out at the wedding at Cana, this is what she encounters:
''Woman, what have I to do with thee?' he asked, and then again louder so that it was heard all around. 'Woman, what have I to do with thee?'
'I am your mother,' I said. But by this time he had begun to talk to others, high-flown talk and riddles, using strange proud terms to describe himself and his task in the world.'
My God, I had no idea that this was the universal experience of owning a son. The echo of 'pride comes before a fall' is striking and yet this dialogue is taken almost verbatim from gospel. Even so, Tóibín's Mary seems estranged from this fall, documenting the hammering of nails through her son's wrists and the breaking of his legs as if documenting an organic life process.
As the book nears its conclusion, Mary's scepticism becomes irate and her questions are the questions that the faithful and faithless alike must ask:
''Who else knows this?'
'It will be known,' one of them said.
'Through your words?' I asked.
'Through our words and the words of others of his disciples.'
'You mean,' I asked, 'the men who followed him?'
This nailing, if you like, of the definition of disciple is effective in reducing its meaning. It is only something that the mother of Christ can get away with. It feels to me as if Tóibín was saving it until the end because it encapsulates so much of the philosophical heart of the book. Why give Mary a voice if it is not for these questions that only she can ask, as mother of Christ.
In the penultimate paragraph, Mary takes her own identity back to that of mother, of womb. It is a clever, circular appropriation of what it is to be the physical, female host of life. Tóibín uses Artemis as Mary's pagan deity, receptacle of her worship:
'I speak to her in whispers, the great goddess Artemis, bountiful with her arms outstretched and her many breasts waiting to nurture those who come towards her.'
In so doing, the novella draws to a satisfying close, where Mary's experience is entirely her own, distinct from that of her infamous prodigy.
No comments:
Post a Comment