Last week, before my rhetorical skills lay down like a mule and wouldn’t get back up again [Two notes from that experience: don’t try to write about psychological archetypes during a Democratic Convention, and bucolic river trips don’t mesh well with dark subjects] I was pursuing the question of the shadow in fantasy. The shadow, mon semblable, — mon frère, is an expression of the animus or anima in Jungian psychology: the face in the mirror, the beast, the menacing guide, the repressed desire, the friend, the way forward.
For the record, the anima/us doesn’t always—or even often—express itself as Jung prescribes in the foregoing links. Jung is a product of both his time and his own neuroses, and his limitations can be off-putting. This short essay from Psychology Today, is a much friendlier approach to the animus. And introductions to Jung and his theories about the shadow are an easier way of easing in to his ideas than the being-dropped-into-cold-water approach of reading the original text.
Even without the terminology, readers know what’s going on in the subtexts of fantasy, specifically as they relate to shadows and evil. In the last couple of weeks, in commenting about villains, we generally agreed that the human villains are a lot more interesting than cosmic Evil, but really haven’t discussed why that’s so. Cfk, shaso and elfling in particular mentioned the compelling qualities of bad guys who work in concert or in temporary alliances with good guys. I had to smile while reflecting on those observations, because if you look at these villains as shadows of the heroes you’ll see interesting things going on as the archetypes play out their roles. After all, a cigar may occasionally be just a cigar, but a quest is never just a quest, not if the writer knows what she’s doing.
An explicit case in point, Ursula Le Guin’s reading of the Hans Christian Anderson fable, “The Shadow,” which is about a learned young man who is too shy to venture into the House of Art, where dwells the Muse of Poetry. He sends his shadow instead, who also can’t enter but, having been cut off, refuses to return to his master. When Shadow does return, much later, he dominates and ends up having his master killed by “a princess who was troubled with seeing too well,” Reason herself. This figure, the man who sends his shadow away only to be undone by him, is a potent and cautionary figure.
Le Guin reads the man as “all that is civilized—learned, kindly, idealistic, decent,” and the shadow as “all that gets suppressed in the process of becoming a decent, civilized adult….And what Andersen is saying is that this monster is an integral part of the man and cannot be denied—not if the man wants to enter the House of Poetry” (1, pp. 60-61). In the end, neither man nor shadow is complete.
This is by no means the only reading of “The Shadow,” but it is a persuasive one for an artist and a person: you must draw from your whole being, not just the light stuff; otherwise you will never be fully human. “Othering” the darkness in the self, denying it, prevents one from becoming whole, as serendipityisabitch discussed in her comments about shadows and incorporating darkness two weeks ago. As I understand it, she sees full acceptance and incorporation of the shadow as a possibility while I don’t, mostly because the darkness in the self is a moveable feast.
Othering cuts the artist off from the well of humanity and leads to some fascinating psychological profiles of artistic frustration and unfulfilled potential. Witness the examples of Oscar Wilde, both Dorian Gray and The Ballad of Reading Gaol; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), perpetual bachelorhood and charges of pedophilic intent; and countless artists who either gorged themselves on darkness (Baudelaire and Jim Morrison), or repressed it and in their repression warped their own genius (Rossetti — Dante Gabriel, not Christina). Othering that which is not socially acceptable (sexual or otherwise) means that what is repressed is not evil, but is made so because the self doesn’t want to accept it and often projects it onto others. The mature artist takes both the shadow and the bright self and, in recognizing the repressed, the undesirable, the dark face in the mirror, works toward a whole artistic vision.
How does this play out in fantasy? Returning to Le Guin’s Jungian reading of “The Shadow” offers a way forward. In the story, significantly, the shadow doesn’t return to the man until after years have passed and the man is mature. Le Guin notes that Jung is particularly interested, not in a child’s maturing notion of good and bad, self and other, but the period we would call the midlife crisis—when we’ve grown up, youthful ambitions are played out, and our minds turn to the second half of life and its winding down. It’s here that the man encounters his shadow again and fatefully fails to master it, which allows it to dominate him and eventually engineer his death. The journey to master the shadow, to incorporate it and become whole, is the journey the man fails to make.
The princess Reason who sees too clearly is duped by man’s shadow, blind to his hollowness, and cruel in her decision to execute the man. And yet, there’s justice to it. Complete dependence on reason will lead you astray, because there are some places reason can't take you. “Part of Andersen’s cruelty,” Le Guin writes, “is the cruelty of reason—of psychological realism, radical honesty, the willingness to see and accept the consequences of an act or a failure to act” (1, p. 61). The man is killed, the shadow marries the princess, and they live happily ever after.
In fantasy, as in psychology, the traditional good vs. evil dichotomy doesn’t apply, at least, not as it might superficially appear. The man fails and his shadow kills him, because he is incomplete. Gretel pushes an old lady into an oven, because the old lady is not just a witch; she’s the crone that devours you. Gretel is not just a girl; she’s Innocence Personified, Innocence that must mature, must reject the childish fear of the crone, or she will not grow up to be a woman.
Little Red Riding Hood has come in for a dizzying run of rewrites, some comic and lampooning feminism, some powerfully disruptive of patriarchal order. The most famous (and the best so far) treatment is Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves,” anthologized in The Bloody Chamber and routinely sparking near-riots in AP English classrooms nationwide. Clothed in innocence and cloaked with red (for blood, for menstruation, for female authority), the girl stalks the wolf as much as the wolf stalks her. She may know that on the solstice night, when the door between child- and adulthood stands open, there is no going back. Therefore, she can ignore the rattle of her grandmother’s bones under the bed; she can laugh at the wolf’s threat to eat her "for she was no man's meat," and indeed, she can tame him, tenderize him, and she does.
"In the language of the archtypes,” Le Guin writes, “we can say with perfect conviction that it may be appropriate [for her to act as she does, because the characters, Gretel and the witch, the girl and her wolf].... are psychic factors, elements of the complex soul" (1, p. 66).
"Evil, then, appears in the fairy tale not as something diametrically opposed to good, but as inextricably involved with it, as in the yang-yin symbol. Neither is greater than the other, nor can human reason and virtue separate one from the other and choose between them. The hero or heroine is the one who sees what is appropriate to be done, because he or she sees the whole, which is greater than either evil or good. (1, 66 )
We can see this dynamic at play in great fantasies; without doubt, we also see it at play in mainstream fiction. And mainstream fiction is as prey to oversimplified morality, a morality that turns banal, one that puts cardboard figures on a stage and forces them to parrot lines in a plot that makes good always triumphant and the downfall of evil always inevitable. These are the novels we read but don’t remember, the ones that were easy. The journey toward incorporating good and evil and acting appropriately is not the purview of fantasy alone, but in fantasy, it finds its best outlet.
In fantasy, the focus is on the journey. The psychic maturation, psychological wholeness—this is the especial strength of fantasy, and the form of fantasy is a natural fit for the psychological quest. Whether we’re following Shadow in American Gods or Richard Mahew in Neverwhere, the journey is the point, and good vs. evil is more a matter of perspective than an absolute.
Therefore, we can give a metaphorical fist-pump when Laura shows Mr. Town what happened to his friends (even though it involves murder), and weep when Shadow figures out Hinzlemann’s identity and the cost of his blessing. Shadow is the figure who sets things right, a force that is neither good nor bad, but is just and, by the end, whole. Richard is the only one in London Below who can survive the ordeal of the Black Friars because he knows and accepts himself without illusion; that knowledge, that acceptance of his shadow, grants him the power not only to survive a test that no one else has ever survived, but to go on and become the Warrior, investing in him the power to choose his future rather than having to accept what has been proscribed for him.
Lesser fantasies devolve into more insipid Good vs Evil paradigms, a Manicheaism, as pico observed last week. Shanarra comes to mind, as does the Mort Queen in Queen of the Tearling (although with Tearling I hope for more to it than that), Voldemort—although Harry Potter boasts a level of complexity its YA label does not imply, the Chandrian in Kingkiller Chronicles (although we haven’t seen the final word there, either. Emperor Palpatine and Darth Maul (offered with reservations). In such fantasies, Le Guin writes,
...the tension between good and evil, light and dark, is drawn absolutely clearly, as a battle, the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other, cops and robbers, Christians and heathens, heroes and villains. In such fantasies I believe the author has tried to force reason to lead him where reason cannot go, and has abandoned the faithful and frightening guide he should have followed, the shadow. These are false fantasies, rationalized fantasies. They are not the real thing. (67)
We can quibble with Le Guin’s absolutist language (I don’t). I have a whole bookcase of second-rate fantasies that are nonetheless dear to me, whether for a turn of phrase or a beautifully-realized scene or because I treasure the memory of my first reading, but beloved or not, they’re second-rate. But then, I consume vast quantities of junk and am happier with an ambitious failure than a safely-played success. Even so, with my omnivorous reading palate, I can discern the great from the good and the bad from both, “bad” being not a value judgment but a recognition of potential left unfulfilled. When something is great, as readers we know it—we can feel it, even if we don’t bother articulating what makes it great. It resounds in us, it speaks.
Why does fantasy speak to us? Because we are all on a journey. The first great milestone is adolescence, the next adulthood. Then there’s parenthood (for those of us who reproduce) and the expansion of self that being a parent entails. The quest doesn’t end at any of these stops, and the second half of the journey, the journey that so interested Jung, begins when the road turns toward the setting sun.
It...seems to me that most of the great works of fantasy are about that journey; and that fantasy is the medium best suited to a description of that journey, its perils and rewards. The events of a voyage into the unconscious are not describable in the language of rational daily life: only the symbolic language of the deeper psyche will fit them without trivializing them. (1, p. 65)
Yes, some fantasies are coming-of-age stories, but if they were merely that, as readers we would discard them when pass adolescence. This means that more of them don’t fit the bildungsroman model, but point to somewhere else, other signposts, other stops along the way.
We’ve beaten this mule enough, I think. Next week, we’ll start talking about heroes, if you’re so inclined. Of course, our heroes don’t abandon their shadows (which is why I started with them). If you know to look for them, you recognize them anywhere.
Previous Installments
Notes
1. Ursula Le Guin, “The Child and the Shadow.” Reprinted in The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction by Ursula Le Guin, ed. Susan Wood, NY: Putnam, 1979, pp. 59-71.