ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SACRED. Rod Jones’ Novel The Mothers (2015)

This essay focuses on Rod Jones’ latest novel, The Mothers (2015), in connection with the sacred archetype of the Great Mother, belied and betrayed by the patriarchal Australian social conventions the author describes with depth of feeling, realistic and historical detail. The Mothers is a feminine saga presenting the interconnected lives of four women of different generations, living in Melbourne, from 1917 to 1990. This essay will show how, in spite of the failure and refusal of patriarchal dominator society to protect maternal partnership relationships, the Archetypal Mother is a relevant spiritual force in most of the women in Jones’ narrative, and in the autobiographical figure of David, the writer-protagonist-narrator of the last part of the novel. The book follows these women’s Songlines with a delicate, thorough and compassionate voice, which also vigorously and resolutely denounces the sorrowful and sad plight they are condemned to, under an insensitive and cold dominator order. Patriarchal society repudiates the sacred feminine in order to control and rule under a hierarchical, absolutist male power. The novel confirms Jones’ maturity and sensitivity as a writer who, with grace and deep understanding, can balance feeling, without falling into sentimentalism, or realism, without the trappings of the documentarist. The novel also successfully expresses the poetry and authenticity of life, while narrating in vivid detail everyday realities.