Rapture Encaged

This is a study in female "individuation". Through an analysis of the 17th-century visionary nun Isabel de la Cruz, Ruth Anthony El Saffar examines the process of individuation in women, and questions whether, in seeking to achieve this Jungian ideal, women are being asked to adapt to images of the feminine that are constructed by a patriarchal culture. This work shows that we have no adequate theories of women's coming to wholeness, and illustrates how Isabel's story is representative both of the suppression of the feminine in modern Western consciousness, and of the psyche's compensatory powers.