I swore never to waste precious hours of my life reading this book, but I was weak and feverish, and it called to me from the shelf. And it wasn't bad, for what it was -- the pacing is perfect; every chapter ends with a cliffhanger. What I found ludicrous and annoying is exactly what E. told me he found ludicrous and annoying when he read it months ago.
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. If you are going to read the book or see the major motion picture (starring -- gack! -- Tom Hanks) you may want to stop here.
The 'code' behind the plot of the book is about the marginalization of women by the Catholic Church, specifically, the banishment of Mary Magdalene, who was not a prostitute, but a woman born of of royal lineage, as well as Jesus' wife and companion. In every other chapter, the professor blathers on about the 'sacred feminine' and the Goddess ancient rites of fertility worship yadda yadda yadda.
And how many women are in this book? I can tell you exactly: three.
- Sophie Neveu is a major character, who, although she is a) clever enough to get the handsome professor out of the Louvre, where he is in danger of being falsely arrested and b) apparently some kind of well-regarded cryptologist, she doesn't have a lot to offer after the initial flight from the museum. She spends a lot of time listening wide-eyed to Langdon's lectures on 'the symbology of the sacred feminine.'
- Pamela, the reference librarian, at King's College.
- Sophie's grandmother, revealed in the final chapters.
This despite the fact that the secret society, the Priory of Scion, exists only to protect documents that prove that Jesus entrusted his wife and partner, Mary Magdalene, not Peter, with the future of the Church. None of the male characters is even married.
Well, one is, but in order to fulfill his duties as the Grand Master of the Priory of Scion, he had to live separately from his wife for the twenty-eight years before his death. So that hardly counts.
Still, I could have swallowed all this stuff about Mary Magdalene, the Gnostic Gospels, etc., if it hadn't been for the the secret fertility rites of the Priory of Scion. Sophie accidentally witnesses one when she is in her early twenties and it causes a ten-year rift between her and her grandfather. Luckily, the Handsome Professor is able, after grand-pere's death, to explain it to the fragile, shaken young woman: because women are the physical manifestation of the 'sacred feminine' on earth, when a man has sex with a woman it's like a religious experience.
For him.
In the feeble paragraphs where Langdon tries to explain all this to Sophie, he talks about how when a man reaches orgasm, there is, physiologically speaking, a moment when his mind goes blank. A moment, that is, when he sees God.
What about the woman? When does she get to see God?
She doesn't, obviously. Not in this book anyway.
I know what you're thinking: I shouldn't waste time critiquing pulpy thrillers for their antifeminist undercurrents. Well, then pulpy thrillers shouldn't waste my time purporting to be about reverence for the 'sacred feminine'!
