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Author
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Comment
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(3/31/03 5:34 pm)
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Gender of hero(ine), villain
I note these patterns in common fairy tales:
* girl defeats feminine danger (Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Wassilissa I think) possibly with help of bit-part hero (Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Red Riding Hood)
* girl defeats masculine danger (Bluebeard, the Handless Maiden, Brother and Sister, the Frog Prince)
* boy defeats masculine danger (Jack the Giant Killer, Iron Hans, various 3-sons stories, the Fisherman and the Djinn)
* boy defeats feminine danger -- so rare it took me 9 months (since posting a query here) to stumble across one!
In Ivan and the Witch, Ivan cooks the witch's evil daughter (like Gretel), escapes with help of a flock of geese ... and it isn't resolved! He doesn't leave his parents' home, and the witch is free to attack again. The only example I can find, and it doesn't work (like Goldilocks)!
So I'm wondering what this means. Jung said in some dialog that a man who has masculine projected onto his anima must resolve this before further development. I'm wondering to what degree "tyrant" is masculine anyway.
According to Robert Johnson, slaying a dragon relates to fighting off the mother complex, but I can't quite see this.
So I think there's something to this, but I don't know what yet but I think it will be interesting! I am looking over _The Mother: ARchetypal image in fairy tales_, Sibylle Birkhauser-Oeri.
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Kevin
Smith
Registered User
(3/31/03 11:47 pm)
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so . .
I don't quite understand what this all means, but I do have an ingrained "yuk" reaction to Jung. I don't like psychoanalysis, but Jung is somewhere below Freud and above Lacan in my estimation. Yuk.
I think a copy of Stith Thompson's _The Folktale_ may help with female/male ogres, as there's a sub-section of one chapter on that topic. Plus, that book is chock full of "patterns" or motifs, which could also help. Have you consided the Juniper tree [KHM47], or Mary's Child [KHM3] by the way? Great examples of female malice (although the female in mary's child is the archetypal, idealised woman, the holy virgin).
I'd also recommend Warner and Zipes, because I find their brand of historicising the fairy tale more palatable than Jungian mysticism. Warner's explanation of why women are depicted in an unkind light even though women were the primary tale tellers is absolutely compelling and credible.
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(4/1/03 7:43 am)
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Eurocentrism
> I'd also recommend Warner and Zipes, because I find their brand of historicising the fairy tale more palatable than Jungian mysticism.
Not to mention the fact that Jung (and Campbell after him) are eurocentric, IMO -- imposing (putative) Western patterns on non-Western material that often springs out of quite different cultural issues. Sort of like the way 19th century philologists used to try to analyze non-Indoeuropean languages using Indoeuropean phonological and grammatical categories. It doesn't work too well most of the time.
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AlisonPegg
Unregistered User
(4/1/03 9:08 am)
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Blubeard's Daughter
As regards "boy defeats feminine danger" you might enjoy
reading my story "The Strange Tale of Bluebeard's Daughter".
You'll find it at www.17xthemoon.com
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Gregor9
Registered User
(4/1/03 12:48 pm)
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Re: Blubeard's Daughter
With any system of this sort--Freudian, Jungian, et. al,--the danger has always seemed to be that a pattern is decided upon and then stories are "found" to fit it. Fairy tales as handed down will compound this problem because of the displacement of, for instance, mothers by step-mothers. When is a step-mother not a mother figure, never mind the dragons that Johnson would have you slaying? Interpretation seems to depend entirely upon the baggage that the interpreter brings to the tale so that (forgive me all for using an example from Bettelheim) to a child raised by a grandparent, the figure of Mother Goethel in "Rapunzel" can be a positive, kind, nurturing figure. Is that interpretation wrong? It's certainly going to be at odds with any Freudian or Jungian deconstruction of the fairy tale.
In terms of defining what a story "means", this kind of reminds me of what a psych professor of mine once said: that you could take anyone who's been institutionalized and have 10 doctors interview him, and you'd have ten completely different diagnoses of his condition. Who's right?
Greg
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(4/1/03 7:51 pm)
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Gender of hero(ine), villain
Hm. My post was about patterns in fairy tales ... if the name "Jung" offends you, just pretend it wasn't there!
...if there's no point in discussing what fairy tales mean, aren't we on the wrong site?
(Alison: Bluebeard's Daughter -- I couldn't find this on the link! I would like to read it.)
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AlisonPegg
Unregistered User
(4/2/03 2:57 am)
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Bluebeard's Daughter - link
Hi!
Sorry you couldn't find the story. Here is the exact link to that
page mysite.freeserve.com/snow...beard1.htm
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Honouria
Registered User
(4/9/03 7:17 am)
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Jung and the whole psychoanalysis stuff
Whilst researching my dissertation I have constantly found references to psychological analysis most of which completely baffles me. The only thing I can really say about Jung draws on his idea that we have a built in set of archetypes which have developed through repeat patterns of behaviour and events, as such the repetition of certain tale types such as females vanquishing males villains and the like would come from a constant occurance of this motif in real life, I suppose you could relate it to sexual struggles and rape scenarios. Maybe the lack of tales where males vanquish female villains is due to a confused archetype that suggests men shouldn't harm women as they are weaker, plus if a woman is so strong she needs a man to destroy her then it crosses all sorts of paths into whether women are how patriarchal society represents them. I'm not sure if thats grounded in any real psycoanalysis but its my take on it!
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(4/9/03 9:36 am)
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Complaint
I have a built-in kneejerk bad response to the word heroine. If you insist on heroine, why not villainess?
Maybe it comes from being a Jewess and a poetess and an authoress.
Feh!
(Sorry, late winter makes me cranky.)
Jane
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(4/11/03 10:09 am)
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Re: Jung and the whole psychoanalysis stuff
I think your ideas about the whole gender thing are very interesting. With all the so-called Divas of the modern world, I think the archetypal evil queen is very much alive and well! I really don't think modern men have the answer to them at all. Maybe we need to look to ancient folk wisdom for a real answer. And can feminists really justify the Diva phenomemon??
Maybe I better dive for cover now!!!
Alison
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judithwq
Registered User
(4/12/03 6:26 pm)
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book title
Kevin-What is the title of Maria Warner's book (mentioned above) which talks about why women are represented in an unkind light? I'd like to read it.
Judith
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Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(4/12/03 8:54 pm)
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Re: book title
Judith,
I believe Kevin is referring to "From the Beast to the Blonde," my personal favorite of Warner's works.
He can correct me if I am wrong, of course.
Heidi
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(4/13/03 8:18 am)
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Mis-understanding
Why is a diva necessarily evil? I think Cher is a diva, for example, and hardly evil.
Jane
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(4/14/03 12:41 am)
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Re: Mis-understanding
Hi Jane!
I wouldn't say all divas are evil. The danger surely is in their overweening arrogance and pride. And pride has its consequences. The evil queens of folk tales seem to embody just this quality. Don't you think? I love evil queens anyway!!! They get the best lines.
All the best
Alison
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Kevin
Smith
Registered User
(4/14/03 3:48 am)
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Yes
Yes Heidi, I was referring to "From the Beast to the Blonde", possibly my favourite book of fairy tale criticism ever (its criticism that's fun to read, amazing).
"Managing Monsters" is also a great read
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(4/14/03 8:29 am)
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Re: Yes
Hi Kevin!
I haven't seen this book "From the Beast to the Blonde". Is Warner an American writer? You couldn't give me a brief outline of her ideas could you?
All the best
Alison
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Kevin
Smith
Registered User
(4/15/03 1:03 am)
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Warner
No she's english, but the book's readily available everywhere.
She is, i guess, a feminist historicist who "seeks to recuperate the role that women have played in both the oral tradition of the folk tale and the literary one of the fairy tale" (Zipes _The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales_).
That's a very reductive summary, but i'd suggest its worth reading as an alternative to psychoanalytic theories that ignore the real world in which the tellers of fairy tales lived.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(4/15/03 6:02 am)
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Divas
OT - Just a quick comment, the term "diva" or "prima donna" dirived from opera to describe the woman who was the lead singer in an opera. The woman had to have extreme skill. It was only later, when it became clear that many divas were arrogant that the colloqueal took hold. So, perhaps the evil step-mother isn't the best corollary, but rather a tale where the protaganist is skilled, but gets knocked down a few rungs, i.e. Taming of the Shrew, Rosemary. I am trying to think of a fairy tale, but even the "Girl who trod on a loaf" isn't the best example.
Jess
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(4/15/03 6:39 am)
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Re: Warner, Divas, Opera etc.
Thanks for that, Kevin. I just found her website there - WHEW!!! I see among everything else she won the Booker Prize too. I don't know how I missed that, but there you go...
Oh well.... (I'm doffing the hat now)
Anyway thanks again. Much appreciated.
Hi Jess!
Just saw you remarks there about the opera connection. Interesting.... Definitely food for thought in all that.
All the best to everyone here. I think these boards are great - a bit like a 21st century "Les Deux Maggots" with Sartre and de Beauvoir discussing existensialism etc. - only it happens in your bedroom overnight. Very surreal that!!!
Alison
Edited by: AlisonPegg at: 4/15/03 6:43:53 am
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Angel
Feather
Registered User
(4/15/03 9:09 am)
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From Divas to Bad Guys
Putting Jung aside, and picking up where alison left off about liking the evil queens, let's change the gender for a moment. I have always been fascinated by the fact that my boys always like the bad guy in a story or movie. When my 14 year old son was in Kindergarten, he wanted to be "Jafar" from Disney's version of "Aladdin", and I spent hours designing and sewing his Halloween costume. Then my 8 year old has been fascinated by Darth Maul, Darth Vader, and Jango Fett in the Star Wars movies. And yes, he was Darth Maul for 2 Halloweens- painted face and all, Darth Vader and Jango Fett the last 2 Halloweens. So there's got to be something behind these characters because of their power. And there's got to be something behind the desire to dress up at Halloween, because I've seen some adults playing out some fantasies as well! And putting Jung and Freud aside, we humans have such a fascination with magic and power and thus our myths, fairy tales, and fantasy.
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(4/22/03 11:20 am)
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From Divas to Bad Guys
...villains are powerful, and power is appealing. There are bad people who aren't very powerful, but I don't think boys go for them.
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