The Cruelest of All Mothers

The Cruelest of Mothers is a unique book, unlike anything I have read before. It defies disciplinary or methodological boundaries. On the contrary, like a Russian nesting doll, it contains layers within layers: being at once a deeply personal, confessional work, a historical analysis, a theological work, and a long and profound meditation upon subjectivity and scholarship.---Emma Anderson, University of Ottawa

Extraordinary: beautifully written, theoretically daring, and a model of scholarly dedication. The Cruelest of All Mothers takes readers on an incredible journey to understand the relationship between the French mystic, Marie de l’Incarnation and the son she abandons for God, Claude Martin. But more than that, Dunn reads the abandonment as a brilliant scholar of Christianity, and shows how Marie echoes a longstanding (but seldom acknowledged) tradition that tethers female sanctity to the renunciation of their children. She also boldly draws from a contemporary critical theory and from her own personal experience as a mother, and dares to think how we might re-think the place of motherhood today. Taken together, the book is rich with historical and theoretical insight, moving, and deeply compelling. It lingered with me for days, and is sure to enrich our own conversations about gender, religion, and the history of Christianity. A gem!---Brenna Moore, Fordham University

“A daring project of an unexpected intimacy between two women separated by almost half a millennium. It interlaces Mary Dunn’s own moving process of meaning-making of family hardships with a thoughtful historical interpretation of the most painful and intriguing moment of the life of St. Marie Guyart of the Incarnation (1599-1672): when she abandoned her only son to answer the call of her God. Informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s understanding of the range of human action as much as by Julia Kristeva’s hypothesis on maternal sacrifice, Mary Dunn reflects on Marie Guyart’s agency as a mother, a widow and a mystic in a world where religious and devote women were deeply influenced by the French Catholic spirituality of self-surrender.”---Dominique Deslandres, Professor, Department of History, Université de Montréal

A fascinating study of motherhood and the Christian tradition as exemplified by the life of a 17th-century Ursuline nun, Marie de l’Incarnation.---Catholic Herald

Mary Dunn compares her own experience as a mother with that of a seventeenth-century woman who gave up her only child when he was 12 in order to follow her religious calling as an Ursuline. [...I]f one can wade through some scholarly jargon, then this book is rewarding.---Stefan Gillow Reynolds, The Tablet

...a personal memoire of general interest to all scholars... Demonstrating how common concerns can connect people across several centuries, Dunn's book exemplifies how scholarship, like religion, can achieve a communion of understanding, if not necessarily agreement.---Catholic Historical Review