Cruelest of All Mothers

Mary Dunn is an Assistant Professor of Early Modern Christianity at St. Louis University. Her first book, From Mother to Son: Selected Letters from Marie de l'Incarnation to Claude Martin, was published by Oxford University Press in 2014. She has also published articles in the Canadian Historical Review, Quebec Studies, and the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, among other journals.

• Acknowledgments xiIntroduction 11 Explication: Representations of the Abandonment in the Relations, the Letters, and the Vie 212 Explanation: Contextualizing the Abandonment within Seventeenth- Century French Family Life 473 Explanation: The Marginalization of Motherhood in the Christian Tradition 714 Explanation: Maternal Hagiographies and Spiritualities of Abandonment in Seventeenth-Century France 985 Motherhood Refigured: Kristeva, Maternal Sacrifice, and the Imitation of Christ 124Afterword/Afterward 149Notes 151Bibliography 187Index 201

"The Cruelest of Mothers is a unique book, unlike anything I have read before. It defies disciplinary or methodological boundaries. On the contrary, like a Russian nesting doll, it contains layers within layers: being at once a deeply personal, confessional work, a historical analysis, a theological work, and a long and profound meditation upon subjectivity and scholarship." -- -Emma Anderson University of Ottawa "Extraordinary: beautifully written, theoretically daring, and a model of scholarly dedication. The Cruelest of All Mothers takes readers on an incredible journey to understand the relationship between the French mystic, Marie de l'Incarnation and the son she abandons for God, Claude Martin. But more than that, Dunn reads the abandonment as a brilliant scholar of Christianity, and shows how Marie echoes a longstanding (but seldom acknowledged) tradition that tethers female sanctity to the renunciation of their children. She also boldly draws from a contemporary critical theory and from her own personal experience as a mother, and dares to think how we might re-think the place of motherhood today. Taken together, the book is rich with historical and theoretical insight, moving, and deeply compelling. It lingered with me for days, and is sure to enrich our own conversations about gender, religion, and the history of Christianity. A gem!" -- -Brenna Moore Fordham University "A daring project of an unexpected intimacy between two women separated by almost half a millennium. It interlaces Mary Dunn's own moving process of meaning-making of family hardships with a thoughtful historical interpretation of the most painful and intriguing moment of the life of St. Marie Guyart of the Incarnation (1599-1672): when she abandoned her only son to answer the call of her God. Informed by Pierre Bourdieu's understanding of the range of human action as much as by Julia Kristeva's hypothesis on maternal sacrifice, Mary Dunn reflects on Marie Guyart's agency as a mother, a widow and a mystic in a world where religious and devote women were deeply influenced by the French Catholic spirituality of self-surrender." -- -Dominique Deslandres Professor, Department of History, Universite de Montreal "A fascinating study of motherhood and the Christian tradition as exemplified by the life of a 17th-century Ursuline mum, Marie de l'Incarnation." -Catholic Herald