A curious women reeks havoc in a perfect world. A handsome prince rescues a fair maiden from some ill-gotten obscurity. This is how we have been taught to interpret the myths and fairy tales handed down to us from distant ancestors.
Most of these stories have served as a thorn in the side of feminist interpretation for generations. But, Heilbrun suggests, they don’t have to be. After all, they are only stories, to be owned and interpreted as we wish.
In Chapter 5 of Reinventing Womanhood, “Search for a Model: History and Literature”, Heilbrun sites the work of Erich Neuman. In his interpretation of Cupid and Psyche, Neuman:
plots the movement of Psyche from the unquestioning lover of a man, her husband, to the awakening of consciousness and demands not only for her own evolution, but for his acceptance of their separateness, their distinct individualities.
A cursory reading of this myth may leave one with the impression that it is a story of faithlessness overcome by devotion. Or, one may view it an allegorical representation of the nature of women.
Neumann implies, however, that this myth operates as a mystic journey to self-hood. Heilbrun summarizes:
Psyche must be persuaded to break the taboo her husband has impossed on her, that she may not see him or know “who he is.” It is the ever-recurring ‘never question me,’ the order not to enter the ‘closed room.’
Neuman suggests that the sisters are not evil, as generally represented or interpreted, but are a force for liberation. Without their influence Pysche would have remained dependent and immature. By defying her husband, Pysche begins a process which eventually leads to her own place amongst the gods and true equality alongside her husband.
Heilbrun suggests we similarly reinterpret fairy tales such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty:
Suppose–and what else does one do with fairy tales–that the prince in Cinderella stood, not for the girl’s need to love a man, transferred in proper Freudian fashion from papa to husband, but for her other self, that “masculine” part of herself, externalized in the story . . .
Does Cinderella not step into a shoe that fits only her? Could that not represent the manifestation of her own self-created destiny. Could not Sleeping Beauty be a story of rebirth after death, of awaking to her own sense of self-hood?
To Heilbrun’s point, the female author need not lament the lack of feminist literary models, she need only look at old models with new eyes.
June 6, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Have you heard about Kelly Link? At her Small Press website she offered her one of her books “Stranger Things Happen” for free and one of them is a re-written tale of Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” (and a few other tales as well, like Cinderella I think) and she basically rewrites it from a feminist perspective. Really good stuff, I thought.
Not quite what your post was getting at here because she changes things but I thought I’d mention it.
I like this post.
June 6, 2007 at 3:25 pm
The tale is truly in the eyes of the beholder…and interpreter. I believe that the power of myth lies in its ability to be interpreted from many ways, like most universal and esoteric truths, and will change as the zeitgeist evolves. It is up to us to interpret.