Word: cyprian
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...himself as well; his behavior during his early years, his adult memories of this period, both convey the peculiar sense that he considered himself not good enough for a style of life he disliked. The Blairs kept up appearances by enrolling their son, at reduced tuition, in St. Cyprian's, an institution that rigorously prepared boys for the great public schools. Eric, 8, was caned for bed wetting: the place encouraged him to feel unworthy. "I had no money, I was weak, I was ugly, I was unpopular, I had a chronic cough, I was cowardly, I smelt...
...women, Charlotte, brings her 14 year-old daughter Felicitas, a girl of remarkable directness and independence, to the retreat each year. She is, as Father Cyprian reminds the women, "our only hope." One by one, they will all die, and only their child will remain...
Gordon divides The Company of Women into a triptych. Part I begins in 1963 with five middle-aged working women loyally flocking to the weekend retreat of Father Cyprian, an unsentimental, uncompromisingly pure priest who has settled in upstate New York. This is the company of women, secular nuns who kneel before their earthly Savior, whom they depend on for comfort, for succor, for sweetness, for confession. They are prisoners of the vision of God and the light of heaven. They are bound by a hunger for the sacred which Cyprian provides with effusion and fanatical authority...
...CYPRIAN, FELICITAS LATER NOTES, "trained me too well, trained me against the sentimental, the susceptibility of the heart." In Part II, a 20-year-old Felicitas has rejected the cold love of the spirit as a student at Barnard living out a later 1960s stereotype. She resides in an upper West Side apartment with two female health food faddists and her professor...
Gordon seems to see friendships as the most interesting and fruitful relations. In Payments. Isabel's relationships with two girlhood friends is critical, and female friendships are the central focus of Women. Father Cyprian's retreat participants are quite different sorts and brought together initially only through their association with him. Yet, a successful businesswoman shares her experience with and draws comfort from a simple housewife...