Duality and Sacred Marriage
This week’s theme was all about duality. In Hero, Campbell discussed woman as goddess and temptress, which I felt was a bit one-sided. He describes the rejection of the female by the hero as being rejection of life, the female in this case usually being depicted as a hideous hag who poses a challenge to the hero that includes some form of physical or sexual contact. The hero’s repulsion at the thought of this act is his rejection of the visceral and chthonic nature of life itself. It is only the hero who can embrace the less “savory” aspects of being who is given the opportunity to ascend to a state of unity with the goddess. I find this assessment a bit biased, in that it does not usually seem to pan out the same for the female heroine. If women are indeed the primal personification of the bodily requirements of life, why then does not the heroine’s journey include a male figure that seeks to unite her corporeal nature with his supposed virtuous nature? Instead, Campbell sites examples of the virtuous maiden winning the heart of the bestial male aspect. Although I acknowledge the long-held belief by scholars that “girls are icky because they bleed and stuff”, I think really what we are witnessing is the unification of the hero/heroine with their own primal nature, regardless of gender. There are as many examples of the gentle heroine/bestial man as there are gentle hero/bestial woman, but history is written by the victor…
So rather than seeing this phenomenon as the unification of the human and the goddess, maybe what we are seeing is the join of two halves of the same whole. Like Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, what was once torn asunder by the gods takes the act of a hero/heroine to repair. In Wolves, Estes discusses that the hero Manawee can only reveal the names of the sisters he is trying to woo once he dispatches his faithful little dog to spy on them. By incorporating and trusting his animal side, the quest is accomplished, and he wins his bride. Animus and anima are reunited through the merging of the primal and the ascended, or the sacred and the profane.
I have discussed previously the transformation of the heroine into her dark aspect as a common theme seen in the heroine’s journey. This is the opposite of the unification of the animus and anima or the god/goddess with the hero/heroine. It is the dividing of the heroine into her own diametrically opposed halves. This weeks films exemplified this duality perfectly. In Ridley Scott’s Legend, Princess Lilli is a young woman in a literal fairy tale world. She is love with Jack, who is feral boy who introduces her to the unicorns of his enchanted forest. When her attempts to touch the unicorns lead to their capture by a demonic force, she goes on a quest to rescue them and save the world from eternal darkness. In the process she is captured by the demon, and tempted by him with jewels, gowns, and other finery to be his bride. We witness Lilli fighting these temptations, but she appears to succumb to their charms and eventually transforms into Dark Lilli. The physical transformation from a young girl in a flowing white dress into the the raven-haired, bat-like woman is dramatic. Although in the end her transformation is shown to be partly ruse to gain the demon’s trust in order to free the unicorns, it is easy to see how the duality of Lilli is not only drawn between good and evil. The acceptance of the pubescent heroine of her “dark” aspect is the acceptance of adulthood. She is to become a woman and a bride, and this is the demarcation between life and death. Someone once told me that having children is the point in which you begin to die. They did not mean this in a negative way, only that this is the point where the focus of your life becomes rooted in the next generation and not in your own. As someone who has remained child-free by choice, I can’t attest to this. For the heroine, shedding her innocence to realize her fertile potential is the first step towards realizing her own mortality and accepting her place in the wheel of life.
We also see this in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, but interestingly enough the creators of this film seem more aware of the implications of this transformation. When Sarah throws a tantrum and wishes for her infant brother to be taken by the Goblin King (played by the perfectly cast, sexually ambiguous heartthrob David Bowie), he gives her until midnight to retrieve the child from the Labyrinth. His communications with Sarah are sinister but flirtatious. He attempts to woo her, and in a dream sequence she fantasizes dancing with him at an elaborate ball in a glittering fantasy dress. Here her transformation is not into Dark Sarah, but Adult Sarah.
At the end of the film, in their final confrontation, he reveals to her that he cannot understand why she is fighting him:
“*Everything*! Everything that you wanted I have done. You asked that the child be taken. I took him. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for *you*! I am exhausted from living up to your expectations. Isn’t that generous?”
The Goblin King is her own wish for a mate come to life. After he reveals this to her, it isn’t long before she realizes he has no power over her, and he transforms into an owl and flies away. In the end, Sarah finds that she can embrace her impending womanhood, but knows that she need not sever all her ties with her childhood flights of fancy to do so.
(I am cutting this week’s journal a bit short, as I have 3 essays due this week (including this class) and over 300 pages of reading to do, half of them in German. Time management only goes so far as there are only so many hours in a day!)
References
Henson, J. (Director). (1986). Labyrinth [Motion picture on DVD]. Henson Associates/Lucasfilm.
Scott, R. (Director). (1985). Legend [Motion picture on DVD].
Campbell, J. (1972). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Murdock, M. (1990). The heroine’s journey. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
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