The Flowering of the Rod

1946

Brasch PS3507 O726 F55

London: Oxford University Press

Biographies of holy people or saints were an important literary genre in the early church. H. D. reinterprets this religious genre in her feminist revision of Mary Magdalene. Believing that women are marginalised in and written out of Biblical texts, H. D. reclaims and reinvents Mary Magdalene, conflating her with other Biblical Marys – Mary, mother of Christ and Mary of Bethany (‘Marys a-plenty’) – and the Egyptian goddess Isis. Written as the world emerged from the trauma of WWII, the poem’s Mary identifies herself with myrrh, a healing balm that can be applied to traumatic injuries, a female-centred spirituality that can heal the world’s wounds.