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The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation
The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation
Woodman’s third book (Inner City Books, Toronto, 1985) develops the title image — the pregnant-virgin — as the structural figure of feminine-individuation understood through the metamorphosis of caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. The chrysalis is the central metaphor: a stage in which “life as we have known it is over and we are, for all practical purposes, alone. No longer who we were, we know not who we may become” (Woodman 1985, quoted in Woodman 1993, p. 106). The book extends the clinical theatre of woodman-addiction-to-perfection (1982) into a wider account of the soul-making that follows the daughter’s release from the negative father complex.
The book is the canonical source for Woodman’s claim that the “feminine” is structural rather than gendered: “Both men and women are searching for their pregnant virgin. She is the part of us who is outcast, the part who comes to consciousness through mining our leaden darkness until we bring her silver out” (Woodman 1985). The image of the thinking heart, of one-in-herself, of the silver mined from leaden darkness, are the book’s most enduring contributions to the post-Jungian feminine lexicon.
The book is not held directly in the present corpus and is read here through the extensive paraphrase and quotation in Conscious Femininity (1993).