‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.’
Genesis 2.24
At the beginning of David Copperfield we see the little hero, as a young child, losing both his parents, so that, like the heroes of so many folk tales and myths, he becomes an orphan. He then falls under the shadow of that fearsome couple Mr and Miss Murdstone, who take on the roles in his life of Dark Father and Dark Mother. He embarks on the long, painful process of growing up, falling under the shadow of a succession of other dark figures on the way, until we see him at last ready to come together with his ‘true angel’ Agnes, at which point the whole immense story is resolved. The novel thus begins overshadowed by the towering image of a dark couple. It ends with hero and heroine finally stepping out of the shadows as a fully-realised light couple.
When, as a young boy, Nicholas Nickleby loses his father, he immediately falls under the shadow of the Dark Father, his uncle Ralph. All the dark figures he subsequently encounters are different expressions of his uncle’s brooding presence over his life – until finally the Dark Father’s power is overthrown. Having liberated his beloved Madeleine from his uncle’s thrall, the hero can at last step out into the light, as a shining example of upright manliness in all the ways the evil, twisted Sir Ralph was not.
At the beginning of Great Expectations we see the little orphan Pip falling under the shadow of two seemingly dark and terrifying older figures, the convict Magwitch and the embittered old recluse Miss Havisham, with her bewitching little protegée Estella in her shadow. Finally, many years later, when Magwitch and Miss Havisham have both died violent deaths, we see the mature Pip coming together with the mature, still beautiful Estella in the garden of Miss Havisham’s ruined house, and ‘I saw no shadow of another parting from her’.
When the novel emerged to play such a dominant role in the popular storytelling of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one of the elements it inherited from the tradition of the folk tale was the idea of tracing the story of the orphaned hero or heroine’s life from early childhood all the way up to its eventual ‘happy ending’ in adult years. Dickens was particularly drawn to this type of tale. And whenever a story does begin with the hero or heroine’s childhood in this way, there is likely to be a strong Rags to Riches element in the way it unfolds, whichever type of plot may be primarily shaping the way the story is presented. This is because, in the language of storytelling, the process of growing up from childhood to adulthood naturally expresses itself in Rags to Riches terms. The shadows in which we first meet the disregarded little hero or heroine – usually those cast by dark parent-figures – correspond to the as-yet unrealised value of what they have it in them eventually to become; when they have at last realised that potential, as independent adults, the shadows finally drop away and they emerge fully into the light.
More often in stories, however, we do not begin with the hero or heroine in childhood. When we first meet them they are already adults, or on the verge of becoming so. What they are not, yet, is wholly mature, settled, happy or complete. No situation is more familiar at the start of a story than that its central figure is a young man or woman who is in the process of stepping out onto the stage of the adult world, but has not yet reached an established state; and who, above all, is still single. Just as in the versions which begin in childhood, therefore, the real question underlying the story is whether, by the end, we can see them having ‘found themselves’, which usually means happily united to the right ‘other half’ and having found a new, secure centre to their lives. There we can leave them, knowing that in some centrally important sense the pattern of their lives has been resolved. As always, the question is not simply ‘can they get married’? It is, can they do so in the right way, showing that the fundamental problem of all human life, the problem posed by that immaturity which is synonymous with egotism, has been confronted and overcome?
A plot which particularly lends itself to presenting the story in this way is Comedy. When we earlier traced the historical evolution of Comedy, we saw that this type of story was originally concerned with showing the transition from fragmentation to wholeness only in more general terms. In the Lysistrata Aristophanes shows the city of Athens under a shadow because its ruling menfolk have become imprisoned in their obsession with making war. In their shadow the women, representing the feminine value, band together with masculine strength of will and organisation to win the men from the grip of the ‘dark masculine’. The result is that, at the end, masculine and feminine are brought together in harmony and the community is restored to wholeness. In the Thesmophoriazusae it is the women of Athens who have become possessed by the ‘dark masculine’, in their obsessive desire for violent revenge on Euripides. It is he who, by putting them back in touch with their proper feeling and sense of proportion, wins them back to balance, so the play can end on an image of good-humoured reconciliation. In The Wasps, the tyrannical old Dark Father Procleon represents all those ageing, dried-up senior citizens who wish to uphold a lifeless vision of social order by their obsessive desire to condemn others.1 Here it is his son, representing youth and life, who liberates his father from his imprisonment by enabling him once more to feel, to see whole and to become once again his true living self.
What happened when the plot developed from these beginnings into the New Comedy was simply that it moved into the mainstream of storytelling and became anchored in that same archetypal family drama which is at the centre of other types of story. The focus of the story becomes the need to make that successful transition to a new generation which is centred on the union of the young hero and heroine. And in this context, as we have seen, Comedy took on two main forms, according to whether the main obstacle to their union lies in the older generation or the younger.
The first shows us the hero and heroine in love, longing to get married, but with the way ahead to their union barred by a Dark Father or a Dark Mother. We thus see a little world in which the road to future life is blocked by the fact that the ruling figure in that world has fallen into a state of darkness and become a Tyrant. The young hero is placed in the familiar situation of all those other types of story where the ‘Princess’ is in the grip of a tyrant or a monster; and in those other types of story he would now have to destroy the monster, in order to free the heroine from his clutches.2 But in Comedy, where everyone in the end has to be brought round to playing his or her role in the archetypal drama properly and positively, it is the tyrant himself who has first to be liberated from his prison, in order for everyone else to be liberated. As his eyes are opened and he goes through a change of heart, he is discovering the ‘unrealised value’ in himself. He is transformed into a ‘light Father’. This enables him to recognise the supreme value of the love between the hero and the heroine. The way to the succession has been cleared, and hero and heroine can step out into the light as the centre of life for the next generation.
The other type of Comedy is that where the problem lies in the younger generation. Either the young hero is not yet ready to succeed, because he has been cut off from his inner feminine by his own state of darkness; in which case it is he who must discover the ‘unrealised value’ in himself (exactly the same is true when the central figure is a dark heroine). Or we see one of those comedies where the problem simply lies in general confusion as to who should properly end up united to whom; in which case it is this uncertainty itself which symbolises the state of immaturity, until they are finally able to see clearly and all confusion is resolved.
Everything that Comedy develops into from these foundations is an extension of these basic themes. For human life to flourish, runs its essential message, each generation has to make the proper transition to the next. The representatives of the older generation must play their part by not being negative and overbearing, clinging onto dominance and thus stifling the onward flow of life. The representatives of the younger generation must develop sufficient maturity for them to succeed. A proper balance must be achieved in all directions. And this means ultimately that the four roles involved in the archetypal process – father, mother, hero and heroine – must all be acted out positively. We thus arrive at a complete model of that drama which lies at the heart of storytelling.
Nothing is more remarkable about the way stories naturally form in the human imagination than the way, beneath the surface, they unconsciously centre round this most fundamental of all dramas in human life, involving just four basic figures. In the dark versions of each of these figures we see a different negative aspect of that which has to be redeemed and made positive if the central figure of the story is ultimately to succeed.
This is why, initially standing over everything, are the grim figures of the Dark Father and/or the Dark Mother. They are not only the negative shadows of what the hero or heroine must eventually become. In the most cosmic sense they represent power, authority and the prevailing order of the human world when it has become most obviously oppressive and opposed to the flow of life. They symbolise the remorseless strength of the human ego when it is without love, or any connection to the world outside itself, and it is this which must be eliminated for life to be renewed.
Most obviously in their shadow languishes the young heroine, the light feminine. She embodies both the life-giving value which they lack and the supreme prize which must be redeemed to restore the world to wholeness. By definition, the selfless light feminine stands at the opposite pole to the blind power of the ego. This is why, while its power remains unchallenged, we see her so often presented in stories as a helpless prisoner or victim, either of a Dark Father or of a Dark Mother. More directly she may explicitly be shown as a daughter to one or other of them: as in all those familiar images of the strong, unloving Tyrant and his imprisoned daughter (Minos and Ariadne, Acrisius and Danae, Aetes and Medea, Shylock and Jessica, Prince Bolkonsky and Maria); or those equally familiar images of a daughter under the spell of an overbearing Dark Mother (Cinderella, Snow White).
The central challenge of stories is to see the heroine liberated from this imprisonment; and this implies she has found the right hero, both strong and loving enough to free her. It is this combination of qualities which enables him both to redeem the heroine and to succeed as ruler over the ‘kingdom’. This is why we usually see the final stage of the drama as a confrontation between the hero and the one-sided dark masculine, either by a direct challenge to the Dark Father himself, or through a battle with a Dark Rival who represents the hero’s own shadow in competing for the ultimate goal.
To make the challenge successfully, however, the hero must already have successfully developed both outward masculinity and inner femininity. His good relationship to the feminine may initially have been developed through a positive relationship to a ‘light Mother’. But to become fully a man he must eventually escape from this dependence, or it will turn into the emasculating grip of the dark feminine. So long as the hero remains in any way under the spell of Mother, the older woman, the Temptress, he remains the weak ‘boy hero who cannot grow up’. He cannot develop the masculine strength or firmness of character to rise to the challenge of contending for the true heroine in the first place. This will leave him frozen in an impotent posture of conflict with the Dark Father who, by the law of the ‘unrealised value’, thus comes also to represent the masculinity the hero cannot make positive in himself.
In such a situation, where the hero is not adequate to the challenge, the heroine herself must in some way remain in thrall to the dark masculine, and everything remains unresolved.
Once we come to recognise this central dynamic to the archetypal process which lies behind so much of storytelling, it is remarkable how many of the situations we see in stories it helps to show in a new light. To illustrate this this chapter ends by looking again at four examples of Comedy, each of which concentrates attention on some less familiar aspect of this four-cornered network of relationships.
The first two, Tom Jones and Der Rosenkavalier, focus in different ways on the problem of the hero in escaping the pull of ‘Mother’. The others, Die Meistersinger and Middlemarch, centre on the problem for the heroine in finding her own strength to win independence from the pull of ‘Father’.
In Tom Jones we see a hero whose chief problem, as a little foundling who has arrived in the world without any prospects of a proper, secure station in life, is to develop his masculine identity. From the beginning the kind-hearted, honest Tom shows a promising connection to the feminine, the centre of his inner identity, as is indicated by the fact that the heroine, Sophia Western, loves him rather than his Dark Rival, Blifil. But because he is outwardly only a poor orphan, the dominant power in their little world – the older generation, centred on Squire Western, the heroine’s Dark Father – cannot conceive of allowing their match.
Tom’s real task is to build up a secure sense of his own manliness, to give him strength of character, self-discipline and a defined position in the world. Thus most of the ordeals he faces, exposing his lack of self-control, centre round a series of encounters with Temptress or Dark Mother figures. These come to a head when he is briefly under the impression that he has actually made love to his own mother: a perfect instance of the sort of superficially inexplicable incident in stories, like Figaro’s involvement with Marcellina, which only makes sense in terms of its deeper archetypal symbolism. But interspersed with these episodes, each of which threatens to destroy Tom and tear him apart from Sophia forever, he eventually, in the shadowy world of London, begins to prove himself as strong, resourceful and independent, capable of courageously intervening to sort out other people’s problems. It is here in the ‘inferior realm’ that we see Tom developing towards maturity, as no longer just a bewildered, amiable young man weakly at the mercy of temptation and circumstance. This is why, when the moment of general ‘recognition’ arrives, we find it entirely satisfying to discover that Tom was the older (and superior) brother to the treacherous, unmanly Blifil all along. Tom has at last established his proper manly identity in the world, and the older generation, led by Squire Western, are at last only too happy to recognise him as worthy to be united to Sophia.
In Tom Jones the focus is on the hero’s own efforts to break loose from the disintegrating pull of the dark feminine. In Der Rosenkavalier we see the same part of the overall drama focused quite differently: this time on the ‘Mother-figure’ who by voluntarily relinquishing her hold on the hero helps to push him forward into his proper state of manhood. We begin with a young, immature hero whose lack of masculinity is emphasised by the fact that he is having an affair with a powerful, older, woman (not to mention the fact that he is played by an actress). Octavian falls in love with the young heroine, only to find the way barred by a forbidding ‘dark masculine’ alliance between his older rival, the Baron Ochs, and Sophie’s nouveau riche father, who wishes to force her into marriage with Ochs to improve his own social position. But salvation comes when the Marschallin, the central figure of the story, shows that she is not a Dark Mother who wishes to hold onto her ‘son-lover’ at all costs. It is she who cunningly masterminds the overthrow of the Dark Rival, in such a way as to open the eyes and heart of the Dark Father to the hero and heroine’s true love. The opera comes to its moving climax as the Marschallin surrenders sadly but gracefully to the need for life to flow onward into a new generation, and she hands over Octavian to his true ‘other half’. Like Calypso relinquishing Odysseus, she thus shows herself to be the Light Mother-figure who guides the hero forward to his manly destiny when the time is right.
In Die Meistersinger the focus of the story is not on the ‘Mother-Son’ part of the overall drama but on the ‘Father-Daughter’ relationship. When in the opening scene the young hero and heroine meet in church and begin to fall in love, we see all the signs of a new centre of wholeness beginning to form (emphasised by the setting and solemn holy music). But each has a long way to develop before they can be united. Eva is still under the shadow of her father, although he has promised to release her to the hero who proves his worthiness by winning the great song contest. Walther still has to prove his manhood, and he takes the first step by trying to enter the city’s ruling body and centre of masculine authority, the Guild of Mastersingers, which has fallen under the dark influence of the order-obsessed Beckmesser. Walther is ruled out of order by his Dark Rival, and only Hans Sachs observes that Walther has all the potential for wholeness. He merely needs a little more maturity to control his abounding power and life.
As the great contest draws near we see the psychological crux of the story, when the still immature Eva clings fearfully to Sachs, hoping that somehow, if she has to marry anyone, it can be him; she is still reluctant to cut her tie to the protective, fatherly presence of an older man. But like the Marschallin pushing Octavian forward to manhood, Sachs urges the heroine forward to meet her proper feminine destiny. Finally Walther emerges in his true colours, demonstrating both his inner feminine through the incomparable beauty and truth of his song, and his mastery by winning the contest. All egocentricity has been transcended, symbolised by the sight of the humiliated Beckmesser being laughed off the stage. Walther and Eva can step to centre-stage, joined in perfect wholeness. And the opera ends on a hymn of praise to the wise father-figure Sachs who has guided the whole drama to its proper, life-renewing conclusion.
In fact it is not until we come to examples of the Comedy plot by women writers that we see this particular ‘Father-Daughter’ aspect of the overall picture explored in proper depth. The story of Middlemarch (like that of Jane Austen’s Emma) is entirely centred round the long struggle of its heroine to break free from the dominance of the dark masculine which threatens to stifle her own inner, life-giving femininity. The intellectual Dorothea Brooke falls for the dried-up old father-figure Casaubon, imagining that she will be able to live happily in a continuing ‘Father-Daughter’ relationship with her husband, acting as the dutiful amanuensis serving his lofty intellectual ambitions. But already we see the more sensitive, artistic Will Ladislaw appealing unconsciously to the life and femininity within her; just as we see her discovering that Casaubon’s outward parade of scholarship is just a lifeless, egocentric sham, a self-deceiving illusion, a mental labyrinth without Ariadne’s thread. After Casaubon’s death, leaving on her the curse by which he attempts to keep her imprisoned in his shadow forever, the rest of the story shows Dorothea gradually coming to terms with her inner feminine. Gradually, despite the curse, she escapes from Casaubon’s deadening shadow, until finally the moment of ‘recognition’ arrives, when she and Ladislaw can openly admit their love to one another. She is at last happily liberated from the ghostly tyranny of the dark masculine.
Such is the universality of the Comedy plot that, in ways like these, it can be used to reflect every nuance of the archetypal drama. In the four examples we have just looked at, the key figure of the story has been, in turn, the hero, the mother-figure, the father-figure and the heroine: each of the four figures making up the family drama, and each presented as playing his or her part in bringing it to its proper conclusion in a way that is unusual. But some of the most complete versions of Comedy are those which show the intermingling of both the basic forms of the plot unfolding at the same time: so that the story ends not just on the image of a young hero and heroine joined together, surrounded by joyful parents and friends, but on that of two couples brought together out of the shadows, one representing the younger generation, the other the older.
In The Winter’s Tale we begin with a King/Father, a Queen/Mother and their young son, representing the promise of new life. But at once Leontes falls into the state of darkness, grievously wronging his wife (and turning his best friend King Polixenes, by the tragic ‘dark inversion’, into an imagined Dark Rival). In the Tyrant’s shadow everything now goes as wrong as could be. First he throws his feminine ‘other half’ Hermione into prison, where she gives birth to a daughter, Perdita, whom Leontes promptly orders to be abandoned to die. Then his son, representing the next generation, dies of grief for his mother’s plight. Finally it seems Hermione has died also. At this point, where Leontes is stricken with remorse, we see him taking the first step towards recognising what a monster he has become. Sure enough we learn that little Perdita, the ‘lost feminine’ as her name implies, is not dead after all; she is just far away, in an ‘inferior realm’. We then follow the psychological essence of the drama entirely in terms of her growing to maturity, the feminine value secretly developing, to the point where she falls in love with young Prince Florizel, representing a potential new centre of wholeness. Although the young lovers then fall under the shadow of the Dark Father, Polixenes – the dark masculine still holds some sway over the story at this stage – they flee to the sorrowing Leontes, whom we find already well on the way to complete inward transformation. He and Polixenes are then reunited in blessing the union of the young lovers. Finally, as the last piece of the jigsaw falling into place, Leontes is reunited with his lost ‘other half’ Hermione, so that the story can end on the ultimate four-cornered symbol of wholeness, father, mother, hero and heroine, all brought out of the shadows and joyfully united. Turned from darkness into light, the archetypal family is complete.
The crucial transforming role in The Winter’s Tale is played by the shining figure of Perdita, originating when the darkness is at its height as a little new-born baby, growing secretly in strength until she can at last emerge triumphantly into the ‘upper realm’ of Leontes’s court, to flood everyone with light. She is a perfect symbol of the feminine value, around whom everyone else in the story is ultimately drawn up into a state of wholeness. In this respect The Winter’s Tale is as much a Rebirth as a Comedy. And, as we have seen, one of the outstanding features of the Rebirth plot is the centrally important role it gives to the redeeming figure, drawing the hero or heroine out of the shadows into light.
So far in looking at the symbolic figures who are central to storytelling we have concentrated on their dark aspects. It is finally time to turn to their opposites: those whose purpose is to lead and inspire the hero and heroine to their goal, the great figures of light.