"[W]hat are the stories which we have projected upon the elusive figure of the Virgin? And to what extent were there alternate stories that might have been more liberatory than repressive? One on which Kristeva focuses is the "censorship of Mary's sexuality" which, she asserts, has been the most devastating erasure of human pleasure and fulfillment in our history. Another powerful story of which the Virgin has been the center and by which our history has been haunted, is the fantasy that we can overcome "the unthinkable of death by postulating maternal love in its place," and so move beyond the rule of the father."