Veiled Woman: Chapter 3 – Veiled Woman
THE SYMBOL
This thesis has sought to demonstrate and clarify the nature of woman, and to portray how woman can participate in the professional world so long as she maintains a proper attitude toward and structuring of her priorities. However, as we have seen, there is a pervasive tendency in our world to discard the receptive nature of woman because of a misunderstanding of its proper meaning. It is my goal to provide an understanding of the attitude by which woman can come to participate in her unique, receptive nature. Therefore, I offer to my reader the symbol that best demonstrates woman’s receptive nature: the veil. Just as motherhood is a visible sign of the nurturing and receptive nature of woman, so the manner of dress of women throughout most of history has also served to demonstrate her mystery and self-abnegation. Throughout history, women have worn skirts, headdresses, and all manner of veils; regardless of the culture or region of the world, this habit of dress has been used to highlight woman’s dignity.
The veil of woman is the symbol that most accurately portrays the truth of her mystery. The vocation of woman to receive love is contained in the veiled and hidden nature of her life; it is within the hidden and secret chambers of a woman that she accepts the love offered, and through which she glorifies it, before giving it back to the world. It is through the concealment of the veil that she paradoxically reveals the glory of her mission. When man loves, he does so actively and visibly, which is his specific calling, but when woman receives love, she does so inconspicuously: she reveals great depths of her beauty to the lover and beloved that the world will never see.
RESPONSIBILITY OF THE VEIL
While the veil is the ideal symbol of woman’s mysterious nature, it brings with it certain responsibilities. Participating as she does in a concealed nature, women possesses keen insight into matters which others desire to keep hidden, and it is her responsibility to deal gently with such knowledge. Le Fort says: “To the privileges of the maternal woman belongs the quiet, extremely important function of knowing how to wait and be silent, the ability sometimes to overlook, spare, and cover up a weakness” (43). Because woman herself is hidden, she forgives and takes under her veil those things that may be forgiven and forgotten. She lives not in a labyrinth of secrets and lies, but with a surplus of information, which she filters and reveals appropriately and tenderly. This is perfectly in-line with her vocation to active receptivity: woman’s nature to receive love is demonstrated through the veil, but so is her manner of giving it forth.
Mothers can most perfectly attest to this truth: that the greatest acts of love a woman performs are often completely overlooked and hidden, unnoticed by those for whom they are done. Yet this is not a perversion of nature: it is a recognition of woman’s great love that she asks nothing in return for her sacrifice. It is motherhood that most accurately displays the veiled character of woman’s nature, and the veil is the most fitting symbol for the hidden and sacrificial life of the mother. The mother does not have to seek to remember that she is called to a hidden existence: the very nature of her position offers her constant reminders of this truth.
THE LOSS OF THE VEIL
Le Fort says that in our world today “the withdrawal of the veil, like the veil itself, is deeply symbolic.... The outer gesture is never without meaning; for, as it issues from a thing, just so it represents that very thing” (44). She goes on to add that some clothing fashions can become “monstrous traitors; in fact, they contribute to the dismantling of woman in the actual sense of the word” (45). The world, inured as it is (on account of concupiscence) to the true beauty of woman, is blind to the radiance and truth of her body, and can only, when viewing her uncovered, use her as a tool (46). I am by no means advocating that women don burkas and mantillas. While it is important for woman to dress modestly and discreetly, yet the real emphasis that I want to convey is the attitude of woman. Remembrance of the receptive and symbolic nature of woman is most important for her to be able to live in accordance with her dignity, and it is this attitude that allows her to find fulfillment. When woman denies her calling to be concealed and seeks self-glorifying exposure, she has negated her true dignity and ceased to represent the receptive nature of both mankind and creation. The denial of her role as ‘the other half of existence’ (47) forces humanity to perceive the world as an incomplete reality.
MODERN PROFESSIONALISM DENIES THE VEIL
Unfortunately, this perversion of the ‘feminine genius’ (48) is the attitude of most women in our current society. The veil has been rejected in favor of success. Today, professional woman often asserts herself actively over and above anyone who interferes with her progressive mount towards the summit of the business world. She submits to degradations of character that are the societal norm: degradations that claim to lift woman high, but really bury her beneath the overwhelming evils of use and abuse: evils such as abortion, divorce, contraception, and many others which infiltrate the sacred realm of marriage and fruitfulness. The excuses offered for these atrocities are that commitments such as motherhood and marriage interfere with a woman’s ability to perform well in the world; this is true, in so far as a mother’s primary responsibility is to her home and it does, indeed, interfere with a false ideal of active life. Thus, as a false ideal, it is no excuse for depriving woman of her dignity. Rather, if woman is called to live in the world, she is asked to do so in a manner that brings her veiled nature with her. When woman participates in the active world like a man, denying her veiled nature, she strips away the covering that maintains her mystery, and is left exposed and defenseless to the unfeeling gaze of an impassive world. She has enabled herself to pursue a career at the expense of her nature. It is the woman’s vocation to defend the helpless and hidden mysteries of life, and a total rejection of her nature to participate in the murderous and callous unveiling of these secret things, both as regards herself and those others she encounters. If woman can participate in unshrouding the most innately sacred and innocent of realities, then she can anticipate neither respect from the world toward her own dignity, nor a true realization of her unique dignity in the world.
THE PARADOX
This emphasis on concealing woman and maintaining an attitude of her veiled nature is a contextual mindset to grant woman the tools by which she can utilize her great gifts and offer them to the world. This is not a contradiction, but a paradox: that only when woman has accepted her veiled and hidden nature is she fully able to radiate her true womanly dignity.
Covering woman is fundamentally different than suffocating or smothering her: it is a tender, personal approach that respects the great dignity and mystery of each person. Woman in the professional world must strive to maintain her veiled nature in her attitude and actions: since she is not participating in a life that directly symbolizes her dignity (as motherhood innately does), she must be careful to manifest that dignity all the more conscientiously in her manner and behavior. This preserves the veil of her nature, since she is not seeking to glorify herself at the expense of her loved ones, but to provide an outlet for her very human and creative nature. It will then, in the professional sphere, be within “these extraordinary commitments that woman receives in the manner of the bride, that is, under a veil” (49) a proper understanding of what it is to be feminine. “It is precisely the veil that is the evidence of every great womanly mission” (50). Woman’s great nature and dignity is the reason for her veil – not to stifle her abilities but to respect them and, paradoxically, to reveal them, and thereby to give greater glory to God.
As the beloved of God, and of her husband, woman receives love. She takes it into her heart (beneath the veil) where she beautifies it, transforms it, and then gives it back to the lover, as her face peeps through a veil, blessing him. This love grows until it becomes a surplus of gift and flows over, to pour its fruits into the world. Woman is called to sacrifice for the sake of those who are less fortunate than her, who struggle to receive or give love, but to do it tenderly, within the veil as it were, where she carefully chooses what to reveal and what to conceal. And so every woman is called to be a mother, whether physically or spiritually. Finally, as a professional woman, she is called to maintain the attitude of the veil: to carry with her the charism of the mother and bride, and to bring her unique nature into the public sphere. By doing all this, she will transform the world.
Footnotes for Chapter 3
41 Le Fort, pg. 81
42 Ibid, pgs. 15-16
43 Ibid, pg. 16
44 It is not impossible for an individual to see the beauty of woman. It is merely impossible for him to do it on his own. With God’s grace, mankind’s concupiscent gaze is purified.
45 Ibid, pg. 62
46 One of John Paul II’s favorite phrases
47 Ibid, pg. 12
48 Ibid, pg. 12