Mary and the Mystical Pregnancy Trope

Owen:  Listen, Gwen, you are going to be fine, I promise, OK? If there was any biological incompatibility, you would be dead. Now, according to this scan, you are carrying a non-sentient blastopheric mass.

Gwen:  A what?

Owen:  It’s a kind of alien egg. But don’t worry; I’m going to look after you, I promise. We’ve got procedures in place for this situation.

Gwen:  You mean this has happened before?

Jack:     You’ve heard of immaculate conception, haven’t you?

Torchwood S2 E9, ‘Something Borrowed’ (2008)¹

 

I wanted a picture of a pregnant lady; this one struck me as rather endearing.

It isn’t, I will freely admit, a particularly inventive concept for a blog post to disagree with Anita Sarkeesian about something. Vast swathes of the civilised world, indeed, seem to have ploughed time and effort into producing media designed to disagree with Anita Sarkeesian about something. If you don’t know who she is, the most comprehensive way of describing her is probably something like ‘feminist media critic’;² she assesses representations of women in a variety of media, but has found herself subject to particularly fervent denigration for her comments about video games.³ My intention in this post is not at all to join the cacophony of voices condemning her as a person or her whole approach to her subject. In truth, I actually find a lot of what she says very illuminating: it’s thanks to her Tropes vs. Women YouTube series that I am able to identify, in the fiction I enjoy, such things as the Smurfette Principle (when a distinct group of characters includes, among many males, only one female, who is characterised primarily by the fact that she is female); Women in Refrigerators (when a female character is killed purely for the sake of the impact her death has on a male one); and the Euthanised Damsel (a hashtag-edgy⁴ elaboration on the Damsel in Distress trope that has the hero who set out to rescue this woman being morally obliged to kill her instead).⁵ I think it’s helpful for these kinds of recurrent character and plot devices to be recognised, defined, and labelled, just as I think it’s always helpful for one to strive to be conscious of the ideas any particular fiction is advocating or assuming, and how it’s doing so. Plus, Sarkeesian always makes her points with clarity, professionalism, and plenty of supporting examples. All in all, then, I really do have a good deal of respect for much of her work. What I want to do in this post is challenge one particular point she makes as part of a broader explanation of another trope that dogs the footsteps of fictional women, namely the Mystical Pregnancy.⁶

As Sarkeesian explains (I paraphrase), a storyline may be considered to fall under the category of the Mystical Pregnancy trope whenever a female character’s reproductive functions are exploited by some sort of supernatural entity to produce some sort of extraordinary and important offspring. This typically represents a short-lived side-plot rather than a major theme of the fiction as a whole: the actually gestation period tends to be enormously accelerated so that the storyline can be crammed into one or two episodes (or equivalent). According to Sarkeesian – here referring to the work of another scholar, Laura Shapiro – the trope distorts the natural process of pregnancy into something alien, disturbing, and to be feared, for the sake of producing the kind of Anguish, Tension, and Drama that tend to populate engaging storytelling. Unsurprisingly, she’s not a fan of its use. And neither, I hasten to add, am I. I agree that it tends to reduce female characters to their biological functions, while failing to consider issues relating to pregnancy and childbirth in appropriate depth as part of the story.⁷

But I don’t agree that the miraculous conception of Jesus⁸ represents, as Sarkeesian puts it, ‘the original Mystical Pregnancy narrative’.

Granted, at first glance, the story seems to fit the trope quite well. Sarkeesian tells it like this: ‘an all-powerful being descended from the heavens and impregnated a young woman with the Chosen One destined to save Earth and the souls of humanity’. A woman becomes pregnant under unusual circumstances, tick; this is at the behest of a supernatural entity, tick; the pregnancy results in an extraordinary and important offspring, tick.

But that exact same combination of ingredients can be found in narratives hailing from centuries before Jesus was a speck in the womb. Just think, for instance, of all the extraordinary children Zeus was supposed by Greek mythology to have had with mortal women: he impregnated Leda in the form of a swan to produce Pollux (i.e. Castor and), as well as, according to some sources, Helen (i.e. of Troy), Danae in the form of a shower of gold to produce Perseus (i.e. and Medusa), Alcmene in the form of her husband Amphitryon to produce Heracles (who surely needs no further introduction) – the list goes on,⁹ and plenty of other gods were meant to have been up to the same tricks too. Even more strikingly pertinent are the first few verses of Genesis 6, that odd little chunk sandwiched between the accounts of Noah’s genealogy and Noah’s ark-related exploits, which sees the ‘sons of God’ impregnate the ‘daughters of man’ to produce mighty and famous progeny.¹⁰ And that’s not to mention the elaborate traditions that subsequently grew up around these verses – 1 Enoch, anyone?¹¹

 

The whole swan thing also meant that Leda’s children were hatched out of eggs rather than being born in the usual way, which is surely at least as bizarre as any modern instance of the Mystical Pregnancy trope.

So the basic, mechanical shape of the Mystical Pregnancy narrative – the elements of her description of it that Sarkeesian identifies in the story of Jesus’ conception – is clearly much older than that particular event, making Sarkeesian’s claim that it is the ‘original’ Mystical Pregnancy entirely misplaced. Moreover, beyond that basic, mechanical shape, the story of Jesus’ conception doesn’t have much in common with modern instances of the Mystical Pregnancy trope. Your average manifestation of the trope in modern fiction sees a woman’s body hijacked by inhuman forces without her consent. These forces have no interest in her as a person, only in the functionality of her reproductive organs; she becomes nothing more than a carrier for whatever variety of remarkable progeny her pregnancy is designed to produce. That remarkable progeny develops remarkably fast in the womb and is probably born in some unpleasantly abnormal fashion (much as I don’t imply that ordinary childbirth is some kind of picnic, it’s surely got to be a little bit preferable to having a vampire baby tear you apart from the inside¹² or performing an emergency Caesarean section on yourself to get rid of a hostile alien squirming about in your womb¹³). The whole thing is entirely weird and unnatural and terrifying; there is probably an altogether more substantial threat to the woman’s life than even ordinary childbirth presents. Then you can bet she doesn’t get to bring up whichever variety of supernatural offspring she’s brought into the world, because that wouldn’t make a very exciting next episode, now would it? It’s these things, rather than the basic elements of the narrative, that make the trope a damaging one; it’s these that reduce female characters to mere biological functions and shove aside real issues surrounding pregnancy and childbirth.

The experience of Jesus’ mother Mary was an altogether different one. I know you know the story, but it’s worth taking another look at it:

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy – the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.¹⁴

If you’re having flashbacks to services of nine lessons and carols by candlelight, rest assured that I am too. Regardless, there are some key contrasts to draw out here. Mary is not just a carrier, selected for biological convenience; rather, she has found favour with God. It’s the same kind of language that was applied to great heroes of the faith like Noah and Moses:¹⁵ God is interested in her as a person, not just what he can use her reproductive organs for. He is with her, not just acting upon her from afar. He is ready to supply her with answers to her questions about how this process is going to work. And she for her part willingly consents to the plan. Nine months later, she gives birth in what we have no reason to think was anything other than the ordinary fashion, and subsequently raises the child she bore to adulthood. When God chose Mary to bear his Son, he wasn’t just choosing a womb; he was choosing a mother. He was, just as he so often does, graciously gifting an ordinary human being with a massive role in bringing about his plan for the salvation of his people.

A mystical pregnancy it might have been, but it’s a far cry indeed from the modern Mystical Pregnancy trope that Anita Sarkeesian talks about.

Footnotes

¹ Thanks to chakoteya.net for the transcript, http://www.chakoteya.net/Torchwood/209.htm, and NowMyWingsFit for recommending the site.

² It’s very close to how she describes herself, after all: http://www.anitasarkeesian.com/.

³ For more specific details, this interview is a good one: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/29/anita-sarkeesian-gamergate-interview-jessica-valenti.

⁴ A term I use to mean edgy for the sake of being edgy – when you can tell a piece of media is more interested in pushing boundaries than actually being good.

⁵ Here are the relevant videos: Smurfette Principle, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opM3T2__lZA; Women in Refrigerators, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DInYaHVSLr8; and various Damsels in Distress, including the Euthanised Damsel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toa_vH6xGqs&feature=youtu.be.

⁶ Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rhH_QGXtgQ.

⁷ If you want examples, check out the video (link in previous footnote): Sarkeesian’s list, while obviously not exhaustive, is superior to any I could compile.

⁸ A little bit of Wikipedia-ing has taught me that Sarkeesian’s addition of a speech-bubble reading ‘The Virgin Birth’ to the moment of her video when she describes Jesus’ conception as ‘the Immaculate Conception’ represents not a gloss but a correction. The Immaculate Conception is apparently a Roman Catholic doctrine stating that Mary was conceived free from original sin by virtue of the foreseen merits of her firstborn, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception. Who knew? Well, evidently not the writers of Torchwood, if my opening quotation is anything to go by.

⁹ Some kind human has in fact compiled a list: http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/ZeusFamily.html.

¹⁰ In case you need to jog your memory: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis+6&version=ESVUK.

¹¹ Or specifically the bit of it known as the Book of the Watchers, that is, chapters 1-36. English translations are really easy to find online; here’s one at random: http://www.ccel.org/c/charles/otpseudepig/enoch/ENOCH_1.HTM.

¹² In case you have been fortunate enough to avoid the Twilight Saga altogether, that’s a reference to Breaking Dawn, the last instalment in the series and the only one I’ve read all the way through. Fancy an Honest Trailer for it while you’re here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvo5_Zi-Yxs.

¹³ And here I reference Prometheus, which honestly I like even less than Twilight. You can have the How It Should Have Ended for it this time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLbcZggwVCw.

¹⁴ That’s from the gospel of Luke, the only one which actually gives any detail about this part of the story: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+1&version=ESVUK.

¹⁵ The link in footnote 10 will do you for Noah, but you’ll need another one for Moses: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+33&version=ESVUK.