Mothers, saints, and witches: mysticism and the feminine in Michela Murgia's writing

Abstract

 With the rise of a critical perspective on the representation of women in Western Christian literature, there is a growing discontent with the way the church has manipulated the female image, socially confining it to two extremes: the saint and the seductress. Symbols and archetypes proliferate, contributing to idealizations that cater only to singular fragments of female identity. In this context, considering the various female spectrums portrayed in the characters of Michela Murgia (1972-2023), especially concerning issues surrounding motherhood, our goal is to investigate the representation of femininity in her works. In Accabadora (2009), we are introduced to a protagonist immersed in a Sardinian tradition that evokes the memory of the mother and the elder. This narrative engages with the vision of the woman's image in the church presented in her essay Ave Mary. E la Chiesa inventò la donna (2011), a study on the female figure for Catholicism dealt with from the perspective of feminist theology. Through a reading that is both social and anthropological, we glimpse the spectrums of Michela's feminist writing in her characters, who engage with a long tradition in which women assume multiple characteristics that transgress the traditional dualities advocated by a convention in which we heard little from Sardinian women speaking about themselves.