Women, Sainthood, and Power: A Feminist Psychology of Cultural Constructions

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Women, Sainthood, and Power joins the study and the authors fascination of Catholic saints to a decades-long investigations of psychology, feminism, and the impact of historical, cultural, racial and class forces on women. This book explores the life stories of an international gallery of female saints from the wide-angle lens of several intellectual disciplines and the close-up view afforded by keenly observed fine points of character. She combines multidisciplinary scholarly research with a novelists eye for detail to create vivid portraits of saints in their times and places. Using her own memories, she argues that there are lessons to learn today from the lives of these exceptional women.

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In this extensively researched exploration of a selection of Catholic women saints, Espn, (emer., San Diego State Univ. and emer., Alliant International Univ.) considers how these women accepted and deviated from their specific patriarchal cultural contexts. After a chapter describing the Catholic Church's process for canonizing saints, Espn considers Joan of Arc and Catherine of Siena as political subversives. She then discusses how the hagiography of the anorexic ascetics Rose of Lima and Mariana Paredes influenced colonial South America. Following the report on Teresa of Avila and a masterful discussion of Edith Stein as mystics of political resistance, she considers the pain and psychological distress of Thrse of Lisieux. Her reflection regarding women proclaimed Doctors of the Church--Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, Thrse of Lisieux, and Hildegard of Bingen--clearly recognizes that this honor is a pretense of equality bestowed by an institution that enforces inequality. The author concludes with brief sketches of North American women saints Frances Xavier Cabrini, Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, Katherine Drexel, and Kateri Tekakwitha, and she identifies Henriette Delille, Mary Elizabeth Lange, Julia Greely, and Thea Bowman as African American women for whom a "cause for canonization" has been opened. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through graduate students.

This volume will interest readers seeking to understand the interplay of psychology and history, secular as well as religious, on women's responses to oppression and power.

Author Bio

Oliva M. Espn is professor emerita in the Department of Womens Studies at San Diego State University and professor emerita of psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology of Alliant International University.