Abstract

This study is centered around a conceptual exploration of the transformative power of intuition, especially as it is expressed in narratives by women. "Intuition" here is defined as "simultaneous realization of wholeness," a kind of insight which connects both internal and external ways of knowing, giving us 'everything at once,' if only for a moment. This insight usually finds form in an image or symbol and often plays out its dynamic dimension through a story or narrative. ;In this context "wholeness" does not refer to a product of abstract generalization but to the apprehension of the energy, spirit or the dynamism--the animating spirit of an image "charged with emotion gains numinosity becomes dynamic" so that "consequences of some kind must flow from it." guided by Susanne Langer's observation that stories follow from images as statements follow from words, this study explores a variety of women's narratives to see how they are created from and shaped by intuition. ;Kinds of narrative and sources of narrative examined include dreams, drawings, and stories of little girls ; personal stories, dreams, fantasies expressed by women from a variety of ages and ethnic and racial backgrounds , and finished works of narrative art, including Kingston's Woman Warrior, LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Lessing's The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five, Walker's The Color Purple, Woolf's The Waves, and Grahn's Mundane's World. Each of these books expresses not only a primary fragmentation but also an intuitive vision by which this split can be healed or transformed. This vision is expressed not only through symbolism within the work but also through the overall symbolic structure of the book. This study shows how unifying symbols give structure, continuity and meaning to these stories, while the stories give life, movement and transformative power to the symbols. ;Intuition not only adds parts/aspects/moments together, it integrates them; from that process, it continues to synthesize them, to create something new; and that creation transforms not only that which it brings together but the person or persons doing the synthesizing