Author Description

Although feminists have turned prodigious energies toward describing mothers and daughters, the father-daughter relationship remains conspicuously ignored. In Daughters of Saturn, Patricia Reis explores various aspects of this relationship with a particular focus on the father's effect on a woman's creative life. Beginning with the myth of Saturn, the archetypal devouring and melancholic father, she explores the many ways that Daughters of Saturn have come to name their experience and have used language to tell their stories. Through myth, dreams, and women's experiences, Reis creates a map marking a journey from life in the Belly of the Father through the First Gate of Awakening. She documents women's resistances and rebellions against the dominant culture of patriarchy, the treacherous Battlezone of Culture, and records the lives of four women writers - Emily Dickinson, H.D., Sylvia Plath, and Anais Nin - outlining their struggles and strategies to live creative lives. Reis marks the trails into what she calls "The Wildzone", a place that has existence outside the law of the fathers; a woman-centered ground of being and knowing.