Women s Spiritual Journeys Thurs.
Religions are particular spiritual paths.
We will be exploring what spirituality is for women characters in the novels and films assigned for class. The patterns that have structured the Western narrative of spiritual journeys are based upon the perceptions and values of male experience. The classic model of the hero's spiritual quest depends for its construction upon the marginalization of the female. Until the 20th century, the female character has been defined almost exclusively in terms of the marriage plot. In this course, we will explore the strategies used by modern American women writers as they revise these narrative traditions in order to make available to the female protagonist a space of spiritual vision which entails subjectivity and agency.