The Company of Women is a symbolic meditation disguised as a realistic Bildungsroman. Mary Gordon's study of faith, love and charity begins with four Catholic women, the girl Felicitas, and their priest Father Cyprian all poised in an ecstasy of hope…. By the end of the novel, Felicitas has grown up, had an illegitimate child, and apparently failed to fulfil her early promise. On a deeper level her worldly failure has only confirmed why Felicitas was "called after the one virgin martyr whose name contained some hope for ordinary human happiness". By choosing to live a life of saintly ordinariness, she illuminates the lives of her mother, godmothers and priest, and leads them to accept their coming deaths…. When Felicitas embraces her iconic Marian role as mother of a child "with two fathers", the mantle of hope can pass on to her daughter Linda, "superior to all other...