Rapture Encaged - the Suppression of the Feminine in Western Culture

Rapture Encaged - The Suppression of the Feminine in Western Culture is a study in female `individuation'. Through an analysis of the seventeenth-century visionary nun Isabel de la Cruz, Ruth Anthony El Saffar examines the process of indiviudation in women, and questions whether, in seeking to achieve this Jungian ideal, women are being asked to adapt to images of the feminine that are constructed by a patriarchal culture. Rapture Encaged shows that we have no adequate theories of women's coming to wholeness, and illustrates how Isabel's story is representative both of the suppression of the feminine in modern Western consciousness, and of the psyche's compensatory powers.