Edith Stein on women.

Jude the Obscure, possibly Thomas Hardy's most melancholy creation, was moved at one point to ask in exasperation: "Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or just a fraction wanting its integer?"

Assuming that this non sequitur--which aptly captures one of the more forlorn aspects of our post-fall existence--merits a response, one who can give both a gracious and Catholic answer is Edith Stein.

Edith Stein, a woman philosopher born in Germany in 1891, was a Jewish convert to Catholicism. Edith was an atheist at university, but her natural love of the good is evident in an account by Rhonda Chervin in Bread from Heaven: coming across the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, Edith read in one sitting and pronounced at the end: "This is the truth." After teaching many years, Edith became a Carmelite nun--her greatest desire. She died in Auschwitz in 1942. When her cell was cleared, a small picture was found with Edith's writing on the back: "I wish to offer my life as a sacrifice for the conversion of the Jews."

Writings on Woman

The book entitled Woman (Volume II of the collected works of Edith Stein) and beautifully translated by Freda Obden, consists mainly of manuscripts from talks Blessed Edith gave during her years as a teacher.

On some points, her thoughts coincide so closely with those of the present pope that it is impossible not to speculate that John Paul, also a phenomenologist, has been greatly influenced by her work. In his June 1995 Letter to Women, the Holy Father says: "When the Book of Genesis speaks of `help', it is not referring merely to acting, but also to being. Womanhood and manhood are complementary not only from the physical and psychological points of view, but also from the ontological. It is only through the duality of the `masculine' and the `feminine' that the `human' finds full realization" (#7).

Blessed Edith, while warning that one must be attentive to the problems of formal ontology, writes: "I am convinced that the species humanity embraces the double species man and woman; that the essence of the complete human being is characterized by this duality; and that the entire structure of the essence demonstrates the specific character."

She elaborates on this Iucidly and logically: "Only a person blinded by the passion of controversy could deny that woman in soul and body is formed for a particular purpose." That purpose, stated in Scripture and demonstrated throughout history, is that "woman is destined to be wife and mother". She also has the role recognized by the Church of virgin consecrated to God.

Woman's unique gifts

Woman is endowed by God with a nature uniquely suited to these vocations--and bearing in mind the philosophical principle that "the soul is the form of the body", the relationship between body and soul is different in man and woman. "Woman's soul is present and lives more intensely in all parts of the body, and it is inwardly affected by that which happens to the body; whereas, with men, the body has more pronouncedly the character of an instrument which serves them in their work and which is accompanied by a certain detachment."

Woman tends towards the whole and the personal and seeks to enhance "harmonious development in herself" and others. "Abstraction in every sense is alien to the feminine nature" and "the fact" is important to her only insofar as it serves the personal. "Her peculiar characteristic of discernment suits her duty as companion and mother; her strength lies in her intuitive grasp of the concrete and the living," writes Blessed Edith.

The realm of feelings is her natural domain; she is more concerned with "being" in its totality than with "doing". Woman has a greater natural ability for reverent joy in creation than does man. The "deepest longing of woman's heart is to give herself lovingly, to belong to another, to possess this other being completely...such yearning is an essential aspect of the eternal destiny of woman. It is not simply human longing but is specifically feminine and opposed to the specifically masculine nature," which is more ordered to action, work and objective achievement.

The Fall

While these are woman's natural attributes, one cannot forget Original Sin and the consequent corruption of human nature.

Those who chafe at the insufficient involvement of women in decision-making processes would do well to remember that the two most significant decisions for mankind occurred during encounters which excluded men.

The first encounter, between the serpent and Eve, led to sin, devastation and punishment. The second, between God and Mary, led to the Incarnation and Redemption. Fulfillment of action in both situations required first the assent of a woman, notes Blessed Edith, but this does not negate the pre-eminence of man. Adam was created first--had he not cooperated with Eve in the first sin, mankind would not have fallen. The second action involved Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who redeemed us as a man.

Blessed Edith speculates that the first sin was not necessarily an act of "formal disobedience" but something of a sensual nature--"perhaps a form of union against the original order." The devil tempted Eve not because she was more susceptible to evil, but because "the nature of the temptation itself was of greater significance to her."

After the fall

As well as bearing her children in pain, woman was further punished by subjugation to man, and as Blessed Edith observes ruefully, "that he would not be a good master was evident in his attempt to shift responsibility onto the woman."

These thoughts are echoed by Pope John Paul in one of his more neglected apostolic letters, Mulieris dignitatem (The dignity and vocation of women). John Paul writes that the words of Genesis 3:16, "Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you", express a now constant threat to the community of man and woman. "But this threat is more serious for the woman, since domination takes the place of `being a sincere gift' ... This domination indicates the disturbance and loss of the stability of that fundamental equality which the man and the woman possess in the `unity of the two': and this is especially to the disadvantage of the woman." (#10)

However, woman has also been entrusted with a "particular duty to struggle against evil and to prepare for the spiritual restoration of life," writes Edith. This is evident in God's vow to the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman...", words which refer specifically to Mary, but also to woman in general.

Remedies to feminine defects

Fallen nature in men will typically lead to dehumanization, brutal domination, over-absorption in work, unhealthy one-sidedness and thus a "stunted humanity", lust and neglect of paternal responsibilities.

Woman's typical perversions can be wayward emotionalism, or "unilateral emotional development", sensualism, over-possessiveness, superficiality, an inordinate desire to communicate and an "indiscreet need to penetrate into the intimate life of others." As Blessed Edith notes, "A dominating will replaces joyful service. How many unhappy marriages can be attributed to this abnormality! How much alienation between mothers and growing children and even mature offspring!"

And because of the more intimate relationship of body and soul in a woman, the danger of spiritual decline is greater.

However, all is not lost. As remedies for these typical feminine defects, Blessed Edith offers "solid objective work," a formation attentive to woman's unique nature, and as the solid foundation, a life of grace animated by love of the living God.

Objective work compels the curtailment of superficiality and a necessary submission to objective laws. While single women and in some cases those in consecrated life must seek gainful employment, Blessed Edith notes that married women working outside the home do not violate the order of nature and grace, providing their activities do not jeopardize the harmony of domestic life. In fact, such work is necessary "wherever the circle of domestic duties is too narrow for the wife to attain the full formation of her powers."

Social role of woman

At the same time she deplores as "abnormal" the society in which economic conditions force women to work when their full energies are needed to manage the household. Blessed Edith attributes some of the social travails of women in her time to the subjection to a masculinized educational system. Also, their confinement to a too narrow domesticity is partly the legacy of the Reformation hatred of virginity.

In her discussion of social difficulties faced by women, Edith displays as always a serene Catholicism, writing: "The imperturbability of the Church resides in her ability to harmonize the unconditional preservation of eternal truths with an unmatchable elasticity of adjustment to the circumstances and challenges of changing times."

As for what work is suitable for woman, and her corresponding role in the social order, while professions which require personal contact and intuition--such as teaching and nursing--are more natural to women, a diversity of individual talents and preferences must be recognized. There should be, she writes, "no legal barriers" to women entering professions of their choice.

More abstract work, and office duties fall into this category, does not come as naturally to woman, but she can perform it well. The caution is that she not approach her work "just like a man", but be aware of her feminine vocation. Her tendency towards wholeness and the personal can do much to alleviate certain "maladies of modern culture, such as the dehumanization of the person, fragmentation and the one-sided development of certain faculties."

Education of Christian girls

A majority of Blessed Edith's writings deal with the principles and problems of educating girls. It is in these passages on education that she is most endearing, for here is revealed her maternal love of her students, and her deep faith. Woman's education must be primarily religious education, she writes, since "woman can become what she should be in conformity with her primary vocation only when formation through grace accompanies the natural inner formation."

This, then, is the heart of the matter. The risk for women, especially those working in the world or bearing the double burden of family and professional duties, is that they will repress, mistrust or misunderstand their feminine nature. Life degenerates into a "gruelling, exhausting struggle."

For Catholic women, their vocation finds its highest expression and fulfillment in an intensely Eucharistic life--seeking recourse to Our Lord in the sacrament of love--and in taking as their model the example of the perfect woman: "Whether she is a mother in the home, or occupies a place in the limelight of public life, or lives behind quiet cloister walls, she must be a handmaid of the Lord everywhere...Were each woman an image of the Mother of God, a Spouse of Christ, an apostle of the divine Heart, then would each fulfill her feminine vocation no matter what conditions she lived in and what worldly activity absorbed her life."