Abstract:
Robin Hyde, Rita Angus and Mary Stanley configure female divinity in their poems and art, iterating ideas analogous to past and present female writers, artists and theologians who use the goddess to advance female agency. The phrase the ‘loving woman’ in the title of this thesis refers to gendered constructions of a woman’s loving role as mother and wife, as well as the potential and alternatives that female divinity imparts to the role. The female divine, broadly referred to as the ‘goddess’, encompasses pagan, supernatural, Christian, and other religious elements. My use of the term ‘artist’ collectivises the creative practice undertaken by Hyde and Stanley as poets, with that of Angus as a painter. My study addresses divinity in the work of Hyde, Angus and Stanley in relation to its potential for self-fashioning and remoulding of gender roles. The living and working context of twentieth-century New Zealand provides a key juncture for goddess exploration owing to the conflicting demands evinced by the ‘new woman’ (also known as the ‘modern girl’) of the inter-war years and the persistence of Victorian attitudes that dictated that a woman’s place was in the home. The goddesses that appear in these artists’ work often literally step outside, putting a wedge in the door kept closed by social norms. The recastings that take place blend bodily, emotional and intellectual concerns and point towards new loving women. I begin by introducing Hyde, Angus and Stanley, considering the goddess as a motif in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature and the place of the loving woman in early to mid twentieth-century New Zealand. Moving chronologically, Chapters One to Three provide analyses of each artist’s use of the goddess. My conclusion expands on the significance of the mortal goddess, a recurring motif in the work of Hyde, Angus and Stanley, and examines it in light of the Goddess movement of the 1970s and onwards, which popularised the goddess as a symbol of empowerment for women.
