[Comments] Matrix by Lauren Groff

[bothers]

Thank you Lemming! I referred back to your primer multiple times while I was reading Matrix and I'm very grateful for your generosity in giving up your time to share so much additional material with us. I enjoyed the book a lot, too, so thanks also for nominating it!


I have just one question left... now that the book is done, do you feel like you got an answer to your thoughts on the title?

Originally Posted by Lemming23

I have been wondering about the title (and maybe it will become more clear as I read through more - it's an odd choice. Matrix is Latin, obvs, and tends to mean mother, but it's not a common use of the term, mater being the common form for mother generally, and also the one that tends to be used in monastic literature to denote the woman in charge of a female monastery (that and abbatissa, the feminine form of abbas, which means abbot)...

It'll be interesting to see as the book progresses if there's a clue to why she chose Matrix rather than Mater.

[DeletedUser79558]

Originally Posted by bothers

I have just one question left... now that the book is done, do you feel like you got an answer to your thoughts on the title?

I think so, yeah. As I said, matrix is a more feminised version of mother than mater, because of the ending, while also being used for more animalised and birthing meanings, which I think is pretty well represented in a couple of ways in the book. Firstly, obviously, Marie's decisions to make the monastery entirely female in representation (including her raising of female lay servants to positions of authority, and her eventual usurpation of the priest's role and disavowing of the papal anathema) fits with the more feminised version, but I think the (attempted, at least - since the diaries get burned, and presumably the monastery returns to normal after her death) institution she tries to create is her form of giving birth figuratively to a new form of mother church, and since mater ecclesia is already taken by the existing institution, matrix ecclesia suits her own institution and role.

[Sprite]

I'd like to add my thanks to Lemming23. I really enjoyed your insights and educational info, including the reference document at the beginning

[lostcheerio]

Confession: I stopped reading this book after the big time skip, and recently picked it up again because I decided that "finishing abandoned books" was fair game for meeting my goal of reading 52 books this year.

So!

I started reading it, powered past the time skip, and fell into the most delightful scene: the three elderly nuns shelling peas and having thoughts.

Gosh, I loved it. Worth resuming, worth pressing forward. Sometimes Groff just really brings it in a way that's undeniable. And that scene has got me right in the feels.