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ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to trace a descriptive
history of woman's psyche as manifested in English and American
literature by and about women during the period from 1688 through
1975. The application of archetypal theory (the description of
recurrent patterns in symbolic and narrative structures within a wide
and complex field of material) to the works of women authors reveals
a logical schema of "matrilinear patterns" which reflects the unique
nature of female behavior and experience. (KS)
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.
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Annis _Pratt
Annis Pratt
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Archetypal Theory and Women's Fiction: 1688-1975
came from can another woman know the4truth of our journey. Only
then can she trust us for we've given her a roadmap. Feminism,
the root self, isn't one magic moment of understanding then life
and closer to yciu/our goal. You'll come home. Home tO your root
consciousness that I set out five years ago to explore the road-
maps laid down by women for each other in their fiction in England
and America during the past two hundred and eighty-seven years.
Since volumes had been devoted to tracing the history of the male
3
of woman's psyche as it is manifested in a significant body of
ness; indeed that the two were one and the same thi-Ag, the implication
response to materiality.
4
From the fiction that I had already considered at the time that
for her, a tension which accounted for the constant tone of irony
she always came up against society at the end: since the pragmatic
analysis.
the relationship between the world of the interior mind and the
5
world of social and political activity: I had forged no connection
world of Dylan Thomas. Most feminists and woman writers with whom
art, and those like myself with involl7ement in both were operating
was able thus to come out of my academic closet into the light
collective past which is the memory of all women since the first
lemur decided to swing along the ground with her legs to see if
it was as much fun as swinging through the trees with her arms.
which women's fiction might yield, the actual time that I have
and Helen Papishvily's All The Happy Endings) there was no single
work which had described the field of British and American material
that I felt constituted a significant sample for archetypal analysis.
took from 1971 until the spring of 1975 and which produced the bulk
or initiative. From the outset I had felt that the quest for love,
for the growth of the woman hero and as destructive when thwarted
that they fell into categories consonant and analogous from century
8
to century under similar subheadings. We found that there was
more in common, that is, between Jane Eyre and Jane Grey (hero
fer males might have changed drastically since Emmeline was Orphan
of the Castle and Emily St. Aubert was immured in the fastness
were not "freaks" to one side of the women's novel but part of
8
an entire galaxy of similar works dealing with much the same themes
in much the same way; that we should not be put off by the "drowning
the right end, and reformist and radical Novels of Marital Rebellion
and Novels of Erotic Assertion, at the left end. From the eighteenth
there were far more outcries against the patriarchy at the right
10
9
end of the scale and far more accommodations to it at the left end
to which its authors and the women they wrote about were subjected.
the same way for women as it had been set up to do for men. The
that those purged and restored are all members of society as known,
--
society as defined by given norms and mores. The problem for the
woman in the audience, however, is that she is not and never has
11
1.0
The hero is the one who comes to know . . . and if he can match
her import, the two, the knower and the known, will be released
do not speak, while women do," he insists that no society has ever
existed in which women exchange men, while on the other hand, the
and myth critics do if they came upon Galatea alive and well
12
male that it is assumed that women never have, never will, and
to set oat to seize upon the power of word and narrative and form
an account of her own growth and development from them she would
own right she were penetrating male lodges where for centuries
of the energies and Rowers not for male use but for that of herself
13
12
Harrison, Maud Bodkin, and Jessie Weston, were able during the
encoded taboos.
but within the head of the individual woman author also, a battle
meeting. "We shall have to understand the way mythic forces arise,
14
13
we shall ever get rid of them and, in fact, I do not believe that
out in this material that we can appropriate for our own purposes
As the individual quests for this goal she is met and forwarded
that of the dream, deriving on the one hand from waking life
and on the other hand from the depths of both the individual and
the collective psyche of her sisters. The author bears the same
15
14
female genre. Even when woman heroes like Lillian in Anais Nin's
16
15
minds, the elixir of new selfhood that they achieved could not
unique from that of male heroes as they experience both nature and
8
woman. Young adolescent women, in particular, engage in fantasies
She sat down on a rock. She unknotted her handkerchief and laid
the stalk with the bulbous underwater leaves beside the leaves
17
16
no way a figure before whom heroes are abject. The Corn God who
Joanna Russ' The Female/Nan and Three in June Arnold's The Cook
is the deadly enemy of the Edgar Lintons whom one must marry, of
the Edgar Lintons one must conceive by, the Edgar Lintons whose
child will kill one so that one can merge in an erotic immortal
epiphany with the Heath and Heathcliff, Green World and Green World
18
17
and the loss of power over the Green World and of Erotic initiative
that it entails, she has one more choice in her quest for selfhood,
and that is to turn back into herself, into her psyche, to under-
take the journey inwards. But where the "night sea journey"
middle life takes him to the bottom of his psyche, through recon-
hero, having achieved the androgynous elixir beyond male and female,
to a social world which has no place for her and which initiates
human liberty has met at its every rising the downclard, stultifying
19
18
was especially because I had not ever lent much credence to the
20
19
the early woman researchers to penetrate what Mary Daly calls the
are extraordinarily exciting and complex, and should form the basis
folk music, and art. There are several points which it seems
21
20
than images in the minds of men, and that the cultures governed
Zeus and Plato. Evelyn Reed, similarly, notes that the tragic
patriarchy, and sacrificing her own life and her own relatives
22
bildungsroman (consider Martha Quest backing like a zombie into
and madness.
which were salvaged from the gynocide of the early modern period.
writers of the novels. Or, as Monique Wittig has put it, "There
23
22
was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked
are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist.
it derived.
24
23
25
24
experience seems to tell us, they are the same thing, for the
further one goes into one's own rooms, the more one discovers
15
that they are inhabited by all humanity." The journey of the
26
25
within her mind may achieve the archetypal city. But over and
Kinds of Love, between the utopian view of the May of Tec club
and its reality in The Girls of Slender Means, between the hetero-
sexual hell of Phil and Jackson's pad and the women's house in
the Acts.
the two locked in .conflict. Where, the weary reader may well
27
26
the woman writer and her audience stuck forever in the unenviable
version of detente.
place not within the work itself but in the relationship between
28
27
derive benefits from those long hours of the night spent in the
world of the inner mind, where we flex our muscles in the experience
capabilities.
Carolyn Heilbrun notes for both male and female genres, are
29
28
Emma Jung we are able to emerge from the dark forest where we
30
29
women as special rather than equitable with men have been per-,_
shared with animals, plants, the sky and the universe itself,
31
30
32
Footnotes
1. Rita Mae Brown, "It's All Dixie Cups o Me," Quest vol. 1
no. 3, p. 49.
33
32
1960), p. 146.
Criticism."
no. 4, p. 41.
no. 4, p. 26.
34
33
35
ARCHETYPAL PATTERNS IN WOMEN'S FICTION
to 6. Androgynous Elixir
41-7t-
EXPLANATION
(for examples and further analysis, see Chapter VII, Feminism and Fiction)
fashion, most
This schema differs from similar schema for male heroes in a drastic
chronological place-
importantly in the fact that its elements cannot be given numbers or
initiated into
ment within a sequence of phases. This occurs because woman is not being
Her deepest images
society as a whole, society as a whole considering her'as a non-member.
a-cultural, precisely because she.is defined (by
and symbols. are "pre-civilizational,"
Levi-Strauss, inter alia) by male culture as a token or subpart of it. For every aspect
there is an immediate and strong counteraspect, thus the arraws.with double ends
of women's
suggesting continual deadlock, a deadlock that is reflected in the structure
invariably
fiction. Most pointedly, the deep plunge into the Inner Journey is almost
downward
concluded with a return to society as known resulting in an even stronger
of threats to
thrust or backlash than usual, the elixir of androgyny being the direst
"civilization." and burst
Correspondingly, such traditional genres as comedy and tragedy are swollen
female characteristicspuffed up and exploded without
within women's fiction, male and
androgynous qualities are indeed
social alternatives suggested, although characters with
the herpes.
36
ANTHROPOWOICAL PATTERNS MYTH CRITICISM: GRAIL PATIUIS hR, WM: 1iatgaraCMnrrnY1
,
Evelyn Reed, WomanIn Evolution: Jessie Wvston, From Rjtual. to The Cod of the Witches (1931)
\RCHETYPAL PATTERN:I IN WOMEN'S
From Mattlarchal Clan to Pair* Rowanco (1919); 6nwa jun anTi :17)11,priaar., materiaf
WW-Fr-ahx, Crall 1.2.1.4,Lnd. (70)
,:ICTION, 168S-1975, Annis Pratt
archal_ Family (1975)
I. Stories of pow.:rful groups
I. The Green World Culture (my I. Stories of a lost culture with of women, linked to the I. The Green World Remembered
"fairy" and elf people of as unity with and power to
term)--Cross-cultural analysis women in a prbminent position in
Arthurian legend (e.g. the utilize animals and plants,
of primitive cultures reveals the Mati(lre de Bretagne, which
matrilincar societies in which suddenly became popular at tilt Witches of Glouchester, e.g. Indian women in Mary
Morgan la Fee) who are versed Austin; Julia in H.D.'s Bid
women have developed a culture Courts of Eleanor of Acquitaine
in balance with but quite dif- and Maria de France in the 12th in green world lore, the Ma to Live (60) feeling her-
ferent from that of men. Women century. In both stories and healing arts and propitiatory self to be "Medea of some
methods of "bringing prosper- blessed incarnation, a witch
are primarily occupied with Mithraic rituals which Weston .
cooperative activities (agri- ity to the land and people." with power"; green world
sees as their source women are lore of regionalist women,
culture, pottery, etc.) males Their lore transmitted in
crucial. "sacred colleges" on "women's Cather, etc.
with hunting and fighting.1
islands."5
II. Erotic Freedom for Women II. The Green World Lover.
II. Rites centering around
--Living patterns.are separ- II. In Mithraic rituals of the Cather's Corn God in 0 Pioneers!
Old Hornie, or Cernunnos or
ate as are eating habits green (vegetable) world under- Woolf's green world orgasm/epi-
"Pan," corresponding to the
(women vegetarian, men eat lying the Grail material the phany in Voyage Out and
lament of the death of Adonis is
Minotaur of Crete. This fi-
,meat) and sex takes place in Katherine's "magnanimous hero"
between. Freedom to come and central, with woman tearing their gure is not worshipped for
his phallic maleness but as in Night and Day; Bronte's
go for women; biological hair over his death and a woman Ileathcliff as one with the
an activator of the Erotic
paternity not being understood always the key to his rebirth. heath; sexuality as visionary
power of the followers of the
however, she conceives her Pratt: the lament for lost erotic between Lessing's Martha and
Virgin Huntress Diana.4
children, they remain with her freedom seems implicit.4 Thomas, Jack.
or her male relatives.2
III. Mother's Brother--This III. Query: is there brother
relative.hcips the family or iII. According to Wolfram von mecerial in witch cults, III. Abandonment by one's uncles
group in times of warfare, Eschenbach's Parzival version of related to the Egyptian pat- and brothers to the mill of the
descent being reckoned in the grail legends the Fisher tern of having a ruling woman patriarchy: e.g. M..ggie and Tom
mother's line. Women share King was Perceval's Mother's in partnership with her own in Mill on the Flos,
governance, female elders Brother brother?
help elect leaders.
IV. The Rape Trauma--Gradual
seizure of women's powers over IV. The Rape of the Pays de 117.. The Loss'of the Lore in IV. The rape trauma embodied in
agriculture, etc., by men, the Gynocide of 1300-1900. women's.fiction: Dianic heroes
Logres. A land of beneficent
primarily involving the sup- Estimated:30 million women subdued (Eliot's Maggie,
women, who could give a traveler
planting of rights over women and girls drawn, burned, Eronte's Shirley, Schreiner's
anything he wanted from a- golden
and offspring by husband's quartered, hung, tortured, Lyndell, Phelps' Avis, etc.);
bowl, was laid waste after one
family. Trauma of shift leads wIth the result that "those actual rapes Lu Small Changes,
of the maidens was raped by a
to bloody propitiation rites, king named Amangon and her 'bowl who were herbalists let their Webb's Gone to Earth, etc.
.
including child sacrifice gardems go to seed....Those followed by ENCLOSURE /N THE
stolen. Logres parallels women's
(partitioning and dramatic who kept the ancient matri- PATRIARCHY which leads to a
islands "to the west" such as
enactments (e.g. Medea) even- Avalon; Ireland under the focal law did so within the splitting from.husbands and
tually mitigated by private confines of their homas."5 lovers and the --
matrilinear Danaans.
property and lump sum rather
INNER JOURNEY UNDERTAKEN
than lifetime offerings.3
V. The Quest of the Grail as a V. The centricity of the 1. The green world remembered
V. Drama, Rites, and eventual-
search for true personhood or "mother pot" or Cauldron, through a guide or token.
ly, Literature and the Arts
maturity via Androgyny. According which in some grail stories .2. The Green World Lover
enact the trauma, propitiate
the mother's brother's ghost, to Emma Jung Perceval must recon- is a stone (such as primitive recalled or met.
women grind corn in) ought to 3. Confrontation.with parents
purge both men and women's cile his silly excessive maseulin-
ity to his anima. ba par.elleled to the Grail or within the mind.
guilt over the transactions.
Golden Bowl figure. 4. Final agon leading to
5. Elixir of androgyny and
1,2,3. For parallels in primate and prehistorical social patterns sec Jane Gondall, In the
in Woman's 6. Return to patriarchy,
Shadow of Man (71) and Elaine Morgan, The Descent of Woman (72). 4. Esther Harding,
backlash
Mysteries (71), defines Virginity in the ancient world as the quality of a woman who belonged t
herself, either giving of herself where ohe pleases or practicing celibacy mit of choice.'
5. "Witchcraft: The Art of Remembering," Quest (Spring, 1975) pp. 41-48.