“You are my love life.” Virgo Season and the Virgin Archetype
Content note: this blog post contains mentions of rape in a theoretical, general context.
Virgo season greeted us with highlighters and miracles yesterday, whether we feel it or not. Last night I watched Under the Tuscan Sun, one of those sweet classics I go to whenever I need a reminder about romancing myself. I curled up, naked and alone in the cool sheets late last night, heart half-aching and half-bursting, from everything and nothing in particular.
Another round with Under the Tuscan Sun (not Tucson, as I misunderstood as a child) felt a little too on the nose for Virgo season. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know the main character Frances, a recently divorced writer who buys a Tuscan villa with her portion of the settlement, develops a strong bond with the Virgin Mary. Virgo is, of course, the latin word for virgin. I’ve done some research over the years on the etymology of virgin. Some apologists for the word will claim that its original meaning was a “woman unto herself,” regardless of whether or not she had made her “sexual debut” (a term memefied as a stand-in for “losing one’s virginity”). There are all kinds of reasons to cringe at the word “virgin,” especially because of the insidious purity culture that uses that word to exert misogyny and patriarchal control. I want to be clear that I do not believe in any sort of defilement as a result of consensual sexual contact.
Here’s where I might diverge from some who are trying to redeem the word “virgin” by arguing it has nothing to do with sexual contact: it might have everything to do with sexual contact, but not with the mores we maintain around sex today.
Not so long ago, sexual contact was associated with two things: marriage and rape. And young women were seen as having two options and two options only: wed or be left vulnerable to rape (which would then be deserved). Remember that in many cultures women were (and are) the ones punished for being raped, not rapists. And of course, marriage has, in many histories, been an economic choice (we still find the economic benefits of marriage in contemporary law).
The third option was to become a renunciate, often joining a community of women who were betraying gender norms and living lives devoted to the divine and to their own community. I cannot imagine that queer sexual gratification was not part of this choice for many. But even if it weren’t, this life of “virginity” was a radical choice when given the other two options. Being a virgin was not necessarily some internalization (or enforcement) of the gross purity culture we might associate with the word today. It was a radical, often queer choice that women or people assigned female at birth (AFAB) could choose for themselves to skirt the systems that saw them as property and less-than.
In Under the Tuscan Sun, we see a woman following this same archetypal journey. During the exposition we find Frances (Diane Lane—what a babe) climbing from the wreckage of an unfaithful husband, losing so much of what she brought to the economic arrangement of the marriage, going on a long journey “away” with a bunch of queer people (the “Gay & Away” tour group), purchasing an old house that needs as much love and attention as her sweet hurting soul. We imagine her wishing to fill that house with a husband and a child, the typical heteronormative arrangement, but the end of the movie reveals a house filled with chosen family: an immigrant laborer with no blood family marrying for love; her queer best friend with a fresh newborn. It is only after she has tended to the house, herself, her community, and her friendships, that the man appears, almost as an afterthought--a cherry on top.
This is not to say that romantic love isn’t important (we’ll get plenty of that in Libra season, appropriately following Virgo season). Virgo season is a wonderful reminder that romance can come platonically, great loves can arrive in the form of friendships, old, broken down houses, and in self-renewal. When Sandra Oh’s character, Patti, surprises Frances with a heartbroken surprise visit, Patti apologizes for ruining Frances’ romantic weekend away. Frances responds, “Don’t be ridiculous, Patti. You are my love life.”
The virgin archetype can be reclaimed, I believe, as a choosing one’s relationships to what is truly life-giving over the prevailing paradigmatic options that require us to sell our soul in exchange for the trappings of “success.” My own spirituality around the Virgin Mary is that she brought Christ into the world without a man. That’s the miracle: not the biological impossibility but the socio-political possibility that we might access and bring forth the divine outside of the constructs that harm us.
I also love the part in Under the Tuscan Sun when Patti calls to Frances, “There’s hot water in the toilet bowl,” with the rejoinder, “Well, it’s not good, unless you want to give your ass a facial.” There have been a few too many moments like that as my little family works on this 1950s orchard we bought on a wing and a prayer.
May your reno projects be a success. And may you romance your whole life. A blessed Virgo season to you, dear one.