index
Onset
The Robber Bride (Margaret Atwood)
Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy)
The End

Onset [back to top]

This paper is written as a learning log for the independent study group that has focused on women and their future perspectives. It does not really come in the form of a learning log though. It is more appropriate to describe it as two separate papers on two of the novels that we have read. I have experienced how difficult it is to let go of the (male?) academic style of writing which forces you to 'prove' every statement you make. I have not succeeded.

It has been, nevertheless, a learning process for me. Besides the stimulating guest lectures and discussions - not all of them being equally interesting or instructive, but like Piercy's characters, I adore difference - I have learned a great deal while writing this paper. I have used secondary material, but none of these writings concerned the novel in the surgery room, so the paper does chart my thinking process.

Besides having learned things I have also enjoyed myself doing this study group. Although I suspect (and know) that only very few people have handed in a written report of the course, I would like to climb the barriers of the English department in order to encourage the advance of this model of learning. I hope that many people will get the chance to set up a course like ours.

The Robber Bride [back to top]

pick any strand and snip, and history comes unravelled
---Tony Fermont (Margaret Atwood)

'A great work of art is like a dream', writes the Swiss psychiatrist Jung in his article 'Psychology and Literature'. 'For all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is never unequivocal. (...) We must draw our own conclusions.' [1]

In his article Jung argues that novels of great artistic value must be part of the category of 'visionary' literature because that is the kind of literature that surpasses the realm of the understandable. The opposite category, 'psychological' literature, does not surpass the familiar. Its material is drawn from the realm of human consciousness. It is merely an interpretation and illumination of the experiences of human life with its eternally recurrent sorrow and joy. Jung thinks this category uninteresting.

Visionary literature, however, he values highly: 'It is a strange something that derives its experience from the hinterland of one's mind. It is (...) grotesque.' [2] Jung explains that what appears in visionary literature is the 'collective uncon­sciousness' - a psychic disposition shaped by the forces of heredity, the 'matrix of life in which all men are embedded'. [3] The collective unconsciousness is manifested in the recurrence of certain images, stories, and figures, called 'archetypes'. These archetypes (also called 'primordial images') can be seen as symbols - not the kind of symbols that point to something familiar, but the kind that stands for something not clearly known and yet profoundly alive. The significance of works of literature can be explained in terms of the recurrence of these primordial themes, images, and narrative patterns.

But Jung seems to have been a little too enthusiastic. A novel doesn't have to 'move us each and all' [4] to contain archetypal images. More recent advocates of what came to be called 'archetypal criticism' view the genres and individual plot-patterns of almost all literature as recurrences of certain archetypes. [5] Some of these 'myth critics', like for instance the Canadian critic Northrop Frye, even reject the notion of the collective unconsciousness as source of the archetypes. He claims that the total structure of literature is a self-contained universe which has been created over the ages by the human imagination. [6] In such a limited cosmos, which is sometimes thought to have found its origins in only a handful of influential mythologies [7], it is - in my opinion - more than logical that cross-references, spin-offs and imitations should appear, after all originality has not always been valued as highly as it is today. These phenomena could be an alternative explanation for the existence of recurrent archetypal patterns within a certain literary tradition.

Margaret Atwood's novel The Robber Bride is undeniably part of the Western literary tradition, and could for that reason alone be analyzed in terms of archetypal patterns. Although it is true that half a dozen of other literary theories could also produce interesting starting points for the interpretation of the novel, archetypal criticism is in my opinion the most appropriate theory because Atwood has infused her novel with archetypal imagery and because the Jungian concept of 'individuation' (on which I will elaborate later) is a prominent theme of the novel.

The Robber Bride is a very extensive novel that seems to touch upon many issues. In essence it is the feminized version of The Robber Bridegroom, a fairy-tale read out by a professor of history to two children that decided that all the characters in every story should be female:

This is the story of The Robber Bride. Tree women - Tony, Charis and Roz - are the innocent girls and Zenia - beautiful, smart and hungry, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless - is the Robber Bride. Over three decades, she has damaged each of them badly, ensnared their sympathy, betrayed their trust, and treated their men as loot. Indeed, their men, because in this story men (still) play a part.

The Robber Bride is also the reworked version of The Three Little Pigs, with an all-female cast:

It is as if they want to say that women are not necessarily nice and lovely. They can be victims as well as murderers, they can be everything men can be. Paula and Erin can be bloodthirsty; Larry, Roz' son, doesn't like the more violent stories, they give him nightmares

Someone does end up in the water after all, but it is not one of the pigs; it is Zenia. But do the little pigs go in for the happy ending? Do they go in for any ending at all? 'The end of any history is a lie in which we all agree to conspire.' (p.522)

It is this theme - death and (re)birth, the ending and the beginning - that ties in neatly with archetypal criticism.

Although the death-rebirth theme is not the only archetype that can be discovered in The Robber Bride - also the (great) mother [9], the fatal woman and the search for the father [10] are well-known archetypes that distinctly reappear in the novel - I choose to elaborate on this specific archetype because it is said to be 'the archetype of archetypes' [11] and because it is in my view the central theme, recurring constantly throughout the story. In fact the novel 'begins' with Zenia returning from the dead and 'ends' with the scattering of the ashes in Lake Ontario:

In Charis' eyes this is a clear case of reincarnation, but she is the only one who believes in that phenomenon. Rebirth, however, does not necessarily mean the actual death of the body. 'Rebirth in the strict sense,' writes Jung '[takes place] within the span of individual life.' [12] In this sense we witness the rebirth (also called 'transformation') of both Rosalind Greenwood - who leaves behind her Catholic childhood to become the Jewish Roz Grunwald - and Karen - who changes into Charis, storing Karen in a suitcase underneath her bed.

Jung describes many different forms of transformation. The most important form is called 'natural transformation' or 'individuation'. This form of rebirth entails the individual's recognition and acceptance of archetypal elements of his or her own psyche. [13] It is described as a process of 'inner transformation and rebirth into another being' - where the 'other being' is the other person in ourselves, hidden in our unconsciousness. [14] Consciousness and unconsciousness do not make a whole when one of them is suppressed and injured by the other, so they should both be given the chance of having its way. [15] The process of individuation (also called psycological maturation) is of great importance for the psychological well-being. Failure in this regard can lead to neurosis.

In The Robber Bride we witness the individuation of Tony, Charis and Roz. This process is in my view the main theme of the novel. In their dreams - dreams filled with rebirth symbolism - the transformational processes are announced, just as Jung describes. [16] In Tony's dream an egg is symbolic for her rebirth and in Roz' dream the garden - symbol of inner growth [17] - announces the transformation. In Charis' dream she merges into Zenia and observes her new self in the mirror: 'What she sees is herself (...) with power. (...) Possibly this is rebirth.' (p. 449).

As psychologically united women - Tony became one with her twin ynot, Charis and Karen have merged into one being again and Roz has accepted the part of her life in which she is called Rosalind - they can take charge of their own lives. No longer will they need other people - especially not men - to give direction to their lives. Their war with Zenia has matured them, and they understand this. There's no joy over the death of Zenia, not this second time:

'That's what they will do increasingly in their lives: tell stories. Tonight their stories will be about Zenia.' (p. 528)

This quote from the last page of the book might give away the message of the book. The death-rebirth archetype could refer to the stories in which the archetypes reappear, to the myths that should be told and retold, again and again, in order to keep the archetypes alive. But women should not carelessly copy stories. They should shape the mythology in such a way that it would do right to themselves. They should tell their own stories - like Zenia, a master-storyteller who puts herself at the center of her own never-ending saga. That is what women should do; rule out the marginalization and put themselves at the center. They should do whatever it takes, even if it means making every character female - as the twins have done. Women should demand a place for women within the mythology; they should write themselves into history and into the literary tradition.

To be able to do that, women should be reborn; they should be independent from men, they should not have 'the timidity that used to be so built in for women' (p. 452).

Only when this comes about they stand a fair chance at winning the war of the sexes.

Woman on the Edge of Time [back to top]

Every event (...) is the effect of an infinitely long process of selection determining that these two things, of all things, meet in this way at this place and time, in this world out of all possible worlds.
---Brian Massumi

Somewhere near the end of The Robber Bride Atwood writes: 'The war in the Gulf is over and the desert sands are spackled with bombs; the oil fields still burn, clouds of black smoke roiling out over the greasy sea. Both sides claim to have won, both sides have lost.' (p. 522)

This is the feeling I got when I finished Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. Connie has been waging a war. A war she claims to have won. But she is sent back to Rockover, a psychiatric hospital in which she will undoubtedly be treated with electroshock-’therapy', where she will be 'filed away among the living cancers of the chronic wards.' (p. 83) [18] And she knows:

The second feminist wave gave impetus to a new generation of female writers which was explicitly aware of its womenhood. The initial demand for non-sexist novels written from a female point of view was fulfilled around 1975 by a throng of fictional autobiographies describing the lives of modern women. But as soon as this realistic genre had become current, many feminist novelists turned towards other genres, among which the utopian. [19]

Woman on the Edge of Time is one of the novels that stems from this reaction. It is a veritably utopian novel in a realistic framework, a fiction in which the faith in the essential goodness of the human race is manifested and in which the conviction that an insubordination of the powerless will bring about the supremacy of this benevolence reverberates the doctrines of the major left wing ideologies. Environmental pollution, homophobia, racism, fallogocentrism, class-subordination, consumerism, imperialism, totalitarianism; virtually the entire political agenda of the late sixties and early seventies radical movement has been embraced at the foundation of the new world ensuing the Age of Uprisings. Only two important leftist-liberal assertions have not (yet) been incorporated: abolition of the death penalty and pacifism.

What does Piercy try to say here? Even if someone is guilty, death penalty is, in my opinion, unacceptable. I can hardly imagine that Piercy approves of the practice. Maybe she wants to say that even in this new society ethical decisions have to be made, that there are, and always will be, limitations to freedom. This is, however, a wild guess. If there is a message, it is very implicit. The question of why she doesn't abolish the death penalty remains disturbingly unanswered. Is it simply a matter of convenience or is there more to it?

In the case of pacifism, the answer is easier. It is a pragmatic rather than a principle matter. It is simply a remnant of the violent revolution, which is - in line with Marx' teachings - regarded ineluctable: 'Power is violence. When did it get destroyed peacefully?' (p. 370) As soon as the war is won, the military apparatus will be dismantled.

The last lines from this quotation brings us to an important question. How do we explain the existence of Mattapoisett within the realistic framework of the novel? Is it really a future society that has invented a way to travel in time, or is it - as Luciente explains on page 177 - 'only one possible future'?

When we settle for the first option, we have to explain the dystopia in which Connie winds up unintentionally as the enemy with whom Mattapoisett is at war. Personally I'd settle for the second option, although this would not render the interpretation that the world in which Gilindina lives is the future with which they are at war. The second option is supported by several other passages, among which the following:

We are also given several other hints that Mattapoisett is just one of many possible futures and therefore could be interpreted as Connie's escape from harsh reality. The accuracy of the quote 'Finally what we see comes from ourselves' is shown when the past, present and future fuse together in chapter seventeen. When Connie flings herself toward Luciente, she finds her near the front. On the following pages Connie is in the living room of the apartment where she had lived with Martín, in bed surrounded by nurses and doctors and in the future, at war in a floater which is finally destroyed by enemy floaters which are piloted and manned by caseworkers, doctors, landlords and other enemies of her own age. When she later contacts Luciente again, it turns out not to have taken place: 'not in my life, Connie. Not in this continuum.' (p. 367) The battle has been a hallucination. Why then, should Mattapoisett not be a delusion?

When we interpret Mattapoisett as merely an envisioned world, we could read the whole novel as realistic after all. It could be read as an allegory: the mental institution and its practices could be identified as the capitalist society and its repressive laws. Mattapoisett could be seen as a series of dreams, dreams in which Connie’s unconscious desires and fantasies are expressed. The meaning of these dreams could be revealed with the help of Freud's psychoanalyses, which offers a systematic method for the interpretation of dreams.

I would like to pose however, that Mattapoisett is not a delusion. This is merely based on the false deduction that the battle between the floaters which I have described, is a hallucination. This conclusion is only imperious when we believe our world to be the only world in existence. When we discharge that idea, the battle might not have taken place in Luciente's continuum but in another continuum, a continuum that co-exists with Luciente's continuum. Mattapoisett can now be seen as a potential world that co-exists with our world. Not a delusion, but an 'alternate universe' (p. 177). A paradise that could be in existence as I write.

I came to this insight by applying the theory of the schizoanalysis instead of that of the psychoanalysis for the interpretation of Mattapoisett. The schizoanalysis is not so much a systematic method for the interpretation of dreams as it is a systematic attack of the teachings of Freud and his followers. [20] It is a concept developed by the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, written down in their L'Anti-Oedipe: Capitalisme et schizophrénie. [21] This collaboration was a reaction to the student-worker revolt of May 1968 [22] and has much in common with contemporary leading feminist theorists such as Luce Irigaray, who just as Guattari started as a follower of the neo-Freudian theories of Lacan, but also became one of its prime opponents, [23] and Hélène Cixous. But where Irigaray and Cixous attacked psychoanalysis only for its phallogocentrism, Deleuze and Guattari waged a polemic war which was aimed at short-circuiting all connections between psychoanalysis and the progressive intellectual movements. Their adversary was state philosophy, the form of representational thinking that has dominated Western metaphysics since Plato [24] and their advocacy is nomad thought, which 'does not lodge itself in the edifice of an ordered interiority, [but] moves freely in an element of exteriority'. [25] Rather than reflecting the world, nomad thought is immersed in a changing state of things. 'It synthesizes a multiplicity of elements without effacing their heterogeneity or hindering their potential for future rearranging.' [26]

Schizophrenia is in Deleuze's and Guattari's work not a pathological condition but a positive process of expansion rather than withdrawal. It is the 'enlargement of life's limits through the pragmatic proliferation of concepts'. [28]

This is what happens in Woman on the Edge of Time. Connie, whose diagnosis is 'paranoid schizophrenia' (p. 379), is a clear example of a 'nomadic subject' [29] that got in contact with the other world. I therefore think it is appropriate to use the theory of the schizoanalysis for the interpretation of the novel, although it is not a clear-cut theory of literary criticism.

On first reading Woman on the Edge of Time does not appear to be a very complex novel. The book can - as I wrote previously - be read as an allegory and Mattapoisett, now being a schizophrenic instead of a dream paradise, is still also the utopia of the roaring sixties and could be read as such. Nevertheless the theory of the schizoanalysis is usefull for a better understanding of both the few puzzling elements and some apparently obvious passages.

Take for instance the new family structure which has been designed.

Deleuze and Guattari explain our nuclear family structure and its effects on sexual identities and the division of labor as a phenomenon that is determined by capitalist economy. [31] Leaving this structure intact while changing the economical system would in their view make no sense, because the child's sexual identity would still be consolidated along conventional lines as a result of the Oedipus complex. The sexual hierarchy would be reinforced and patriarchy would remain untouched, leaving women as the economically subordinated and production economy what it is: a system reproducing and consolidating the existing binary oppositions.

It is this 'first dichotomy' which Mattapoisett has tried to erase by radically changing all structures that could produce or consolidate inequality. These structures include - as I pointed out - the traditional nuclear family and the capitalist economy, but also the concept of gendered language (they have desexualised it by using 'per' and 'person' instead of her/him and he/she) and the practice of the patronymic. [32]

The quotation of Boliviar continues with a remark about the 'patriarchal mind/body split' which according to 'per' has 'turned the body to machine' (p. 211). This is a clear reference to the dialytrode which is implanted into the heads of Connie and her fellow patients. This image is strikingly similar to one of the abstract concepts of Deleuze and Guattari, the desiring-machine. This concept - which represents the restrictive mechanisms of capitalism - ultimately produces a subject alongside the machine, functioning as a part adjacent to the machine. [33] This underlines the interpretation of the allegorical imagery that I have given before: the mental institution is a metaphor of the repressive capitalist, phallogocentric society (Deleuze and Guattari called it the fascist-paranoid state) which will enforce its controlling mechanisms on the individual in order to consolidate its existence.

That is what Connie does. She fights her war. I started this interpretation with a quotation of Margaret Atwood, saying that I got the feeling that both sides had lost. When you read carefully however, you will see that Connie is right. She has won. Despite the modern technology the fascist-paranoid state- apparatus has at its disposal, Connie's resistance has not been broken. Whether her bloodthirsty plan has succeeded or not, she has caused disorder, and 'the more things will be shaked up, the bigger the chance that a new era will emerge'. [34] The only reprisal they can think of is (psychological) murder, but death is in Deleuze's and Guattari's view an inevitable part of life: it is through death experience is registered, ensuring progress of some kind or other. Death makes living purposeful. [35] To quote the words of Luciente at Sappho's death:

The End [back to top]

'Every ending is arbitrary, because the end is where you write The end. A period, a dot of punctuation, a point of statis. A pinprick in the paper: you could put your eye through it and see through, to the other side, to the beginning of something else.' (The Robber Bride, p. 522)

An ending, then. September 18, 1995, at 18.10 in the afternoon - or evening as some would say. It's a Monday. The Dutch government has decided that children should bear the name of the mother, unless the parents decide differently. This, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak would say, is a step in the right direction. This, a letter in De Volkskrant says, is a step in the wrong direction. Both sides claim to be right, both sides are right, depending on the direction you want to go.

An arbitrary end. I could have discussed Foetal Attraction or Herland, but I decided not to. I could have discussed the female aesthetics or the cyborg, but I decided not to. I could have discussed The Robber Bride and Woman on the Edge of time in much more detail, but I decided that is was enough. Tomorrow is another day and another paper will be waiting to be finished.

After all that has been said, I have not yet given a clue as to whether I liked the novels or not. Actually I can't because I do not know whether I do or don't. The Robber Bride is sometimes funny yet sometimes a bore. Some quotes have made it to my diary, other lines have annoyed me enormously. On the whole I think I liked it, especially for the end, which gives the book something metaphysical, something bigger than life.

The same goes for Woman on the Edge of Time. It's the end that makes up for the perpetual lectures of Luciente and her contemporaries. The margins of the novel are jammed with such remarks as 'stupid' and 'naive'. Still, the unbridled idealism, the unbending conviction that one day a better world will come about, appeals to me. Connie is a martyr without a cross who at least tried. I love her and I love the book and I would love to live in Mattapoisett. But I would continue Connie's struggle and fight for the abolition of the death penalty. And then I'd tell them there are other ways to win a war than defeating the enemy, and then, who knows? 'Fasure', the fight won't be over, because endings don't exist. Nevertheless, I will pretend they do. Right now.

Endnotes [back to top]

[1] C.G. Jung, 'Psychology and literature', in 20th Century Literary Criticism; a reader, D. Lodge, ed., (Singapore: Longman Singapore Publishers, 1991), p. 187. [back]

[2] ibid., p. 178. [back]

[3] ibid., p. 187. [back]

[4] ibid., p. 188. [back]

[5] M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 5th ed. (Orlando: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, inc., 1988), p. 112. [back]

[6] ibid., p. 202. [back]

[7] The Norton Anthology mentions 'three great bodies of mythical material' viz. the classical Greek, the Celtic and the Norse/Germanic mythologies. [Abrams, et al, ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, volume 2, 5th ed., (New York/London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986), p. 2562.] Jung draws material from a few other mythologies - including the American Indian, the Russian and the Balkan - and, from religious mythologies - the Old and New Testament and the Koran - to prove his theory of the collective unconsciousness. [C.G. Jung, 'The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious', volume 9 part 1 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1968)] I think, however, that of these mythologies only the Christian - and possibly to some extend the Russian - can be claimed to have been an important source for the Western literary tradition. (The existence of several literary traditions next to each other does not necessarily challenge the concept of the collective unconsciousness, because they could all contain the same archetypes - only being dissimilar to the extend that there could be changes in the frequency in which a specific archetype reappears or the hierarchical position which they obtained, because of the separate evolvement of the various traditions. When we, however, follow the myth critics, and dismiss the collective unconsciousness as an 'unnecessary hypothesis', the body of archetypes of the various literary traditions could differ considerably more because the mythologies on which a certain tradition is founded would, in that case, not originate from one universal source, and could therefore be as profoundly diverse as different cultures can be. I don't know whether this is actually the case. It is in my view an interesting question, but a far too extensive one to elaborate on any further in this paper.) [back]

[8] The page numbers refer to the 1995 Bantam Book edition. [back]

[9] C. G. Jung, 'The Archetypes and the Collective Unconsciousness', chapter 2. [back]

[10] M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, p. 202 [back]

[11] ibid., p. 202. [back]

[12] C. G. Jung, 'The Archetypes and the Collective Unconsciousness', p. 114. [back]

[13] D. Lodge, introduction to C. G. Jung, in 20th Century Literary Criticism; A Reader, p. 174. [back]

[14] C. G. Jung, 'The Archetypes and the Collective Unconsciousness', pp. 130-131. [back]

[15] ibid., p. 288. [back]

[16] ibid., p. 130. [back]

[17] Hans Biederman, Prisma van de symbolen (Utrecht: Het Spectrum B.V., 1991), p. 371. [back]

[18] The page numbers refer to the 1987 The Women's Press edition. [back]

[19] Maaike Meijer, 'Lezeressen op zelfverdediging', in Vrouwenstudies in de cultuurwetenschappen, Rosemarie Buikema and Anneke Smelik, ed. (Muiderberg: Couthinho BV, 1993), p. 54. [back]

[20] Adrie van Dijk, Euphoric Poubelle, (Doctoraalscriptie instituut Theaterwetenschap Universiteit Utrecht, 1988), p. 34. (All quotes from this text are translated) [back]

[21] (Paris: Minuit, 1972). The complete translation appeared only in 1983, but several chapters were translated into English and published in magazines in 1977. (I have not used this text; only secondary material) [back]

[22] Brian Massumi, A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1992), p. 2. [back]

[23] Rosi Braidotti, 'In de sporen van Anna en Dora', in Vrouwenstudies in de cultuurwetenschappen, Rosemarie Buikema en Anneke Smelik, ed., (Muiderberg: Coutinho, 1993), p. 204. [back]

[24] Brian Massumi, A Users Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 4. [back]

[25] ibid., p. 5. [back]

[26] ibid., p. 6. [back]

[27] Adrie van Dijk, Euphoric Poubelle, pp. 78-79. [back]

[28] Brian Massumi, A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 1. [back]

[29] Adrie van Dijk, Euphoric Poubelle, p. 80. [back]

[30] ibid., p. 78. [back]

[31] ibid., p. 51. [back]

[32] The practice of the patronymic should clearly be modified, fro one thing because it has been identified as a practice that produces and consolidates difference [see: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 'Displacement and the Discourse of Woman', in Displacement, Derrida and After, Mark Krupnick, ed., (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 169-170.], but also because there is no father and there are three (equally important) mothers. The elimination of the last name seems a logical thing to do. In Mattapoisett they have gone yet a step further. To break dependencies completely, children can choose their own name at the age of twelve (and ever after). Symbolically this could be read as a radical possibility to determine one's own identity and to change it whenever one is inclined to. [back]

[33] Avital Ronell, 'Technology and the Schizofeminime', in The Other Perspective in Gender and Culture, Juliet Flower MacCannell, ed., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 88. [back]

[34] Adrie van Dijk, Euphoric Poubelle, p. 78. [back]

[35] ibid., pp. 78, 80. [back]

(c)1995 Raymond van de Wiel | www.raymondvandewiel.nl