Prepared by : Ravi Bhaliya

Paper : New Literature

Roll No : 24

Email : ravibhaliya5@gmail.com

Submitted To Smt.S.B . Gardi Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Feminine Sacredness in The Da Vinci Code

Since its publication, “The Da Vinci Code “has been the controversial novel. What makes this novel controversial is that Dan Brown weaves a story about a museum curator with secret life, a historian and how the church has been on a bloody rampage for several years trying to cover up the “Truth “about Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Introduction

Along with Mary Magdalene’s untimely historical death, Dan Brown has also incorporated the concept of Sacred feminine. By deconstructing the story of Bible, he tried to show the facts of Mary Magdalene’s life and relationship with Jesus.

Compared to other character Mary Magdalene’s role is shorter in Bible and she is not given enough importance, instead of giving respect to her she has been portrayed in negative sense, While in Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code “she has been playing a critical role.

Challenge to Christianity

In the novel, Dan Brown challenges the Christian ideas of feminine, by favoring the pagan ideas. Before the Christianity, people believed in paganism.

Pagan religion believed in both gender, it emphasized equality of both gender and sometimes revered feminine leadership and divinity too. Followers of pagan religion believed in worshiping of Goddesses.

 But Dan Brown, to show feminine sacredness, comes with

evidence that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus and she was the favorite disciple of Jesus, Brown quotes from the Gospel of Phillip,

 “……and the companion of the savior is Mary Magdalene.

Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said him, ‘why do you love her more that all of us?”’

Place of Women in Christian Mind

Here, he shows that Jesus was more closer to Mary Magdalene and he wanted her to be the leader of Church, but as follower started feeling that if women will be on power position they will lose their power and dignity, and to protect their own power and dignity, they started blaming women that women are impure and lower to man. They worship the God but refused to worship the goddesses.

So until now women have been seen as pure, divine and sacred but as Christianity came into existence, it challenged the sacredness of feminine.

Before it, women have been praised as she is able to give birth to new life bit with the Christianity, idea of sacredness questioned and they started believing it’s not woman but man who is divine and able to create new life.

Now women is treated as second or lower to man, her ability to create new life is not considered as something divine but as something impure and unclean.

Challenge The Sacred Feminine

Celebrates Sacred Feminine In the novel writer celebrates sacred feminine, his main intention of

the novel is to bring feminine sacredness .He brings with the fresh idea and questions the traditional thinking of not only Christian religion but also all that religion which believes that only man can carry the bloodline of family.

As he shown in the novel that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus and they had daughter Sarah, He propounded the story by showing that Sophie Neveu is the Grand Daughter of Mary Magdalene and Jesus.

Sophia has been shown as the bloodline of Jesus, and she is having that divine spirit within her, which reader feels frequently as the story moves.

Even she has been given a symbolic name “Sophia”, which means Wisdom. In the Christian religion Sophia is honored as goddess of wisdom by the Gnostics. So, in the novel Sophia Neveu stands for the wisdom. She has been presented as highly intellectual personality.

The way she saves Robert Landon from the police and the way she drives the car, the way she explained the Cryptex to Robert Langdon, and this all things proves that Dan Brown has in real sense shown the Female leadership through Sophie Neveu.

Wisdom and Respect

When Sophia finds that Robert has Travel Phobia, she just touched Robert’s forehead and in moment Robert feels better and relaxed. This links her with Jesus as he has also the power of touch.

At this point of time we feel that woman can also carry the bloodline of family, here we find that blood line is carried from Grandmother to Granddaughter Here, Brown also makes satire on male dominated society. He by and large suggests that society needs to change its mentality that only Man can carry the bloodline of family.

More than that If Brown wants to show female sacredness and the power of female than he would have not chosen Robert Langdon as scholar of symbology and he could have think of female character to help Sophie.

Here we found the male mentality towards woman. We do not know that why he choose male not female. It makes reader to think that how far he has remained faithful to female sacredness.

Questioning …?????????

When the Divine Feminine asks a question, she does Not go hunting for the answer. Instead she invites the Answer to find her .

Divining the Feminine