{"id":105118,"date":"2016-11-22T16:31:50","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T21:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=105118"},"modified":"2016-11-22T17:01:47","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T22:01:47","slug":"mariette-in-ecstasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/22\/mariette-in-ecstasy\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariette in Ecstasy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Revisiting Ron Hansen\u2019s outr\u00e9, erotic Catholic novel, twenty-five years later.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>

From the cover of Mariette in Ecstasy<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1906, Mariette Baptiste, a seventeen-year-old postulant, is the talk of the Sisters of the Crucifixion convent. Although their days are scheduled down to the minute\u2014silence, recitation, meditation, prayer, work, meals\u2014the sisters can\u2019t help but talk about the new, rich teenager in their midst. Why did she join them? What\u2019s her secret?<\/p>\n

Mariette in Ecstasy<\/a>, <\/em>Ron Hansen\u2019s prose-poetic novel, was published twenty-five years ago, and its strangeness hasn\u2019t withered. The rare book lauded by both The Village Voice<\/em> and diocesan newspapers, Hansen\u2019s novel is written in gorgeous sentences that combine meticulous material specificity with ambiguous emotion. (Mariette\u2019s room in the convent is described as a \u201ccell\u201d where a \u201choly water stoup is next to the doorjamb, and just a few feet above Mariette\u2019s pillow is a hideous Spanish cross and a painted Christ that is all red meat and agony.\u201d) A quarter-century after its publication, no other novel has quite captured its marriage of the sacred and the sexual, the pious and the secular.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hansen\u2019s earlier novels, Desperadoes <\/em>and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford<\/em>, were literary Westerns. Nebraska<\/em>, his story collection, contains mostly realistic tales of his home state, save for the strange lead story, \u201cWickedness,\u201d a re-telling of the blizzard of 1888: \u201cSparrows and crows whumped hard against the windowpanes, their jerking eyes seeking out an escape, their wings fanned out and flattened as though pinned up in an ornithologist\u2019s display\u201d\u2014sentences that predict Mariette in Ecstasy<\/em>\u2019s odd yet precise notes. Hansen introduces us to these idiosyncratic, devoted sisters, who consider it their \u201csweet obligation to pray.\u201d Many sisters are skeptical of Mariette, but some embrace her, inviting her to their hiding place in the campanile, where one sister says \u201cwe\u2019re being bad.\u201d They talk of old boyfriends, \u201cabout what we miss. Whiskers. Dancing. Everything.\u201d They talk of God, who sustains them\u2014and Mariette begins to feel at home. Her peace does not last long.<\/p>\n

A deeply devout book colored by sex and suspense, Mariette in Ecstasy<\/em> was praised in all corners. Entertainment Weekly<\/em> gave it an \u201cA+,\u201d calling it \u201can astonishing novel, maybe even a great one,\u201d a book that is \u201cslender, meditative, exquisitely crafted.\u201d At The New York Times<\/em>, Michiko Kakutani praised the book as a \u201cluminous novel that burns a laser-bright picture into the reader\u2019s imagination, forcing one to reassess the relationship between madness and divine possession, gullibility and faith, sexual rapture and religious ecstasy,\u201d concluding that one need not be Catholic \u201cto be moved and amazed by this fable.\u201d<\/p>\n

William Gass might have written a book like Mariette in Ecstasy<\/em>. Imagine On Being Blue<\/em>\u2014with its lyric, encyclopedic compendium of the linguistic possibilities evolving from a single word, color, and mood\u2014being about God. Gass smirked at belief, but liked what it could do for fiction. He admired the gossipy yet theologically grand short stories of his fellow Midwestern writer J. F. Powers, saying one of the writer\u2019s main questions was \u201ccan a mind manipulate its body without becoming its body first?\u201d<\/p>\n

Good Catholic storytelling has always been corporal: messy, strange, steeped in the sins of real people. I\u2019m not talking about church thrift-store fare, devotional tales with covers of sunrises over mountains. Consider the profane piety of the whiskey priest in Graham Greene\u2019s The Power and the Glory<\/em>. The lust of Obadiah Elihue Parker in Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s \u201cParker\u2019s Back.\u201d The scarred and scorned bodies searching for grace in the novels of Toni Morrison. Catholics go for crucifixes over crosses. They want their Mass wine in a chalice, not Solo cups. The Eucharist is not a symbol; it is substance.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a theology a fiction writer can appreciate\u2014including an atheist like Gass. Mariette in Ecstasy<\/em> was made for disbelievers with a postmodern palate. Either God is real\u2014and therefore the strangest story ever told\u2014or his unreality makes for absurd performance. Whatever the truth, earnest faith makes for fascinating entertainment. Hansen\u2019s story arrives in truncated yet lyric sentences. Section breaks slice the narrative into vignettes. Ambiguity is not only its theme; it is the book\u2019s operating principle.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t try to be exceptional,\u201d the nuns warn Mariette. Simply be a good nun.\u201d Easier prayed than done. Before Mariette left her father\u2019s house for the convent, she stood in her bedroom, dropped her nightgown to the floor, and said, Even this I give you.<\/em> She tells one sister that she has \u201cbeen praying to be a great saint \u2026 I\u2019ll try to be irresistible.\u201d When sisters tell a story about watching a couple kiss in a nearby field, Mariette \u201csmiles tauntingly\u201d and says, \u201cYou don\u2019t suppose it was me, do you?\u201d Mariette tries to be pious and quiet, but she attracts rumors and concerns. In the eyes of the judgmental sisters, her venial sins include her appearance and her youth; her mortal sin is the stigmata that tattoos her palms and feet.<\/p>\n

Hansen doesn\u2019t play cheap here. He asks readers to follow belief toward its logical conclusion. If the sisters of the convent seek Christ, they must be ready to receive him in their midst. They are not. They are petty. They want a God for the mind but not the body. That, it seems, would eliminate the mystery and neuter their theology.<\/p>\n

Of all the vessels to choose, the sisters wonder, why would God select Mariette? The novel answers that her body, and likely her soul, is ready to receive the ecstasy. Since she was thirteen, Mariette prayed to know Christ\u2019s passion. She is now given her chance. A sister finds Mariette kneeling on the floor of her room, \u201cunclothed and seemingly unconscious as she yields up one hand and then the other just as if she were being nailed like Christ to a tree.\u201d Later, her \u201cwet blue eyes are overawed as she stares ahead at a wall and she seems to be listening to something just above her, as a girl might listen to the cooing of pigeons.\u201d<\/p>\n

The novel is part horror, part suspense story. Mariette\u2019s actual sister, the convent\u2019s Vassar-educated Mother C\u00e9line, is dying. \u201cYou\u2019re my sister, but I don\u2019t understand you,\u201d C\u00e9line says to Mariette. \u201cYou may be a saint. Saints are like that, I think. Elusive. Other. Upsetting.\u201d Mariette is an objection of devotion and envy. Sister Emmanuelle, an older nun, watches Mariette during Compline so that she may \u201cdiscreetly adore the new postulant in her simple night-black habit and scarf. She\u2019s as soft and kind as silk. She\u2019s as pretty as affection.\u201d While Mariette sleeps, a different sister comes to her bed and kisses Mariette\u2019s palm before licking the blood inside the wound. \u201cI have tasted you. See?\u201d<\/p>\n

There is no sex in Mariette in Ecstasy<\/em>, but the novel\u2019s sexuality\u2014and I do mean sexuality, not merely sensuality\u2014is tied to its sacredness. Mariette\u2019s Catholicism is not conjecture; it is lived and livid. Her faith is her skin, her mouth, her desire. Her faith is charged with the closeness of her sin. Mariette has offered her body to God. Someone, or something, has chosen to make that body into a canvas: \u201cBlood scribbles down her wrists and ankles and scrawls like red handwriting on the floor.\u201d She becomes a scandal. She leaves red footprints on the floor. She \u201cholds out her blood-painted hands like a present and she smiles crazily\u201d while saying \u201cOh, look at what Jesus has done to me!\u201d Hundreds of lay people flock to Mass with gifts, including \u201chothouse flowers, a box of parboiled rabbits, green ferns in a Wardian case\u201d and \u201cOttawa root beer.\u201d They long for a show, but she merely kneels before the priest to receive the Eucharist as \u201ctears of shame and penance shiver like hot mercury in her eyes.\u201d Disappointed, the masses leave to long for other miracles\u2014but first one woman \u201csquats to reach through the railing and take back her jar of quince marmalade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elusive, other, upsetting. Mariette might be a saint. Her body, though, is not her own. After her stigmata becomes news, a physical examination is scheduled\u2014with her father, a well-known local doctor. He is the most dogmatic character in the book, more severe than the old-fashioned sisters. Mariette thinks back to her cold years at home, when her father would drone about \u201chuman biology as the dinner plates were cleared.\u201d She remembers \u201chow his hard white shirt cuffs would often be brownly spotted with some patient\u2019s blood.\u201d Mariette has been denied, disbelieved, and even assaulted within this book, but her father\u2019s censure stings the most: \u201cYou have all been duped,\u201d he says. She never recovers from her father\u2019s judgment.<\/p>\n

Mariette in Ecstasy <\/em>is a book to be rediscovered in the age of Pope Francis, a man of modernity and tradition, a charismatic bundle of contradictions. Both Hansen\u2019s novel and Francis suggest that paradoxes and surprises are endemic to Catholicism. In the twenty-five years since its publication, no other work of Catholic fiction has come close, often because Catholic writers have forgotten the wild strangeness at the center of the faith.<\/p>\n

Hansen became a deacon in the Catholic Church in 2007. His parish is St. Joseph of Cupertino in California. He leads a Bible study group on the Gospel and a Christian film discussion group. He teaches at Santa Clara and continues to write historical fiction, including A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion<\/em>, the true crime story of an affair that leads to murder, which then leads to execution by electric chair. His newest book, The Kid<\/em>, was recently published. For a writer drawn to legend, Billy the Kid is a good subject. Yet his strangest, most fascinating book has never received its due praise. Mariette in Ecstasy<\/em> is the prototype of what a new Catholic fiction might look like, a fiction where the oddities of piety permeate down to a story\u2019s syntax and soul.<\/p>\n

Nick Ripatrazone is a staff writer for\u00a0<\/em>The Millions.\u00a0He has written for<\/em> Rolling Stone, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Esquire, and<\/em> The Kenyon Review. His newest book is<\/em> Ember Days<\/a>, a collection of stories.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revisiting Ron Hansen\u2019s outr\u00e9, erotic Catholic novel, twenty-five years later. In 1906, Mariette Baptiste, a seventeen-year-old postulant, is the talk of the Sisters of the Crucifixion convent. Although their days are scheduled down to the minute\u2014silence, recitation, meditation, prayer, work, meals\u2014the sisters can\u2019t help but talk about the new, rich teenager in their midst. Why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[489],"tags":[6215,25889,25887,14922,12204,8619,25886,5504,747,12729,17623,1786,25885,25888,16024],"class_list":["post-105118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-2","tag-catholicism","tag-christ","tag-convents","tag-eroticism","tag-habits","tag-j-f-powers","tag-mariette-in-ecstasy","tag-michiko-kakutani","tag-novels","tag-nuns","tag-on-being-blue","tag-religion","tag-ron-hansen","tag-stigmata","tag-william-gass"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRevisiting Ron Hansen\u2019s \u201cMariette in Ecstasy\u201d 25 Years Later<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Nick Ripatrazone on the singular novel and its unique, erotic take on Catholic faith.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/22\/mariette-in-ecstasy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mariette in Ecstasy by Nick Ripatrazone\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 22, 2016 \u2013 Revisiting Ron Hansen\u2019s outr\u00e9, erotic Catholic novel, twenty-five years later.In 1906, Mariette Baptiste, a seventeen-year-old postulant, is the talk of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/22\/mariette-in-ecstasy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-11-22T21:31:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-11-22T22:01:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nick Ripatrazone\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Nick Ripatrazone\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/22\/mariette-in-ecstasy\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/22\/mariette-in-ecstasy\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Nick Ripatrazone\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a060377dce2930856cd3962fce42c81\"},\"headline\":\"Mariette in Ecstasy\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-11-22T21:31:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-11-22T22:01:47+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/22\/mariette-in-ecstasy\/\"},\"wordCount\":1739,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/22\/mariette-in-ecstasy\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/marietteinecstasy.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Catholicism\",\"Christ\",\"convents\",\"eroticism\",\"habits\",\"J.F. 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