This book is about the god who electrifies women. And the Dionysian charge that surfaces in the writings of Jungian analyst Linda Fierz-David, classicist Jane Ellen Harrison, and poet H. D. Although the scene of this work is the mystery chamber in Roman Pompeii, it really begins with the need to fathom a mystery of identity. Who were those analytical women who embraced Jung’s depth psychology with their whole lives? Why did so many of them never marry? Where did their peculiar strength come from, and why did they choose to study what they chose to study? Nor Hall here uses the ten scenes of dramatic initiation to frame the experiences of death, maenadic madness, and change that occur to women in the midlife constellation of Dionysos, the Shaker and Loosener. Along the way, her meditation—rich with images from dreams, vase paintings, poetry, biographies—considers as well “housebound” women and other constraints, the gripping experience of childbirth, and relationships with the masculine, whatever its form. Color plates. [Back cover]