"Mariette in Ecstasy"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, in "Mariette in Ecstasy", Ron Hansen utilizes the symbols found in nature to enhance the repressed sexuality Mariette experiences: In nature, sex is not a sin; it is a part of God's creation. The author points out that Hansen uses his poetic descriptions of the natural environment as an editorial critique of the Catholic condemnation of sexuality and pits the nuns' rejection of nature and sex against its insistent and wholesome presence, represented by Mariette. The paper relates that Hansen employs the natural image of moonlight along with Mariettes nakedness and the imagery of the rabbit wire, the rabbit being a symbol for fertility, tied just below her sex.

From the Paper:

"Mariette in Ecstasy begins in the autumn of 1906 in upstate New York, when a 17-year-old girl wearing "her mother's wedding trousseau of white Holland cloth and watered silk" leaves her father's house to join the Sisters of the Crucifixion. Beautiful and educated and eager to assume the rigors of cloistered life, Mariette Baptiste is a
perfect model of obedience and piety- at first, but then she begins to doubt the strength of her own faith. She writes in her confessional diary..."

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