It’s a kind of magic: myth, women
and the imaginary
Re-enchanting the Academy Sept. 2015
Jacki Cartlidge
Canterbury Christ Church University
Why is a radical re-think necessary?
Many women find the Oedipal paradigm used in psychoanalysis –
unacceptable
• Freud’s patriarchal model – sole model of interpretation
• Women have no desire to be considered as second class, incomplete (i.e. castrated) men - Lacan and the law-of-the-father
Society has moved on significantly since the Victorian era and the birth
of psychoanalysis
And then there’s feminism…but patriarchal endorsement persists
The-law-of-the-mother?
First be clear these are all MYTHS
Privileging the male
Why use Aeschylus and not Sophocles ?
Theban plays of Sophocles (425-10BCE).
Aeschylus’ Oresteian Trilogy (459BCE)
Oedipus solving the riddle of
the Sphinx
Ingres (c.1805)
Don’t throw baby out with the
bathwater
Nevertheless, psychoanalysis, acknowledges and
explores the unconscious
Oedipal myth, used to investigates themes central to
the human condition, including: matricide, patricide,
jealousy, revenge, guilt, and metaphors of
ingestion/introjection, sleeping/death/rebirth.
It is essential that the importance of these themes
and metaphors used for them are not rejected also.
Part of our culture: apparent in myths and found in
fairy stories
Different readings needed to add different
psychological and somatic dimensions to ontological
discussions of women and the feminine
What’s being proposed?
Aeschylus’ Oresteian Trilogy (459BCE)
Re-edit masculine interpretations of myths, fairy tales and women
produced by a patriarchal society which privileges the male.
Bring wider reading and another mythical paradigm[s] into use:
Aeschylus’ The Orestereia “parthenogenic complex”
Less well known, but watch out for patriarchal readings 2015 The Globe
Clytemnestra
Even though:
Goldhill (2015) claims Aesychlus… made the play about gender, …the
matriarchal killer, Orestes, is exonerated in court precisely because the
goddess [Athena] favours the male in all things.
Goldhill’s suggests that for many readers it is “a conservative charter
myth for patriarch itself…[it’s] staging of civic justice…contains the most
profound expression of the myths of males supremacy through which
society reproduces its structures of power.” (notes in Globe programme
2015)
Rethink myths
in contemporary terms
“Bad” v strong women – The law-of-the mother
Aeschylus : Agememnon: exonerated ; Clytemnestra: guilty - dies
Orestes pursued by Furies (who are tamed by Athena to become The Kindly
Ones – unsexed – power taken away)
Sleeping Beauty – alternative writing/readings
Has to be woken by a man (in some sources sexually.)
Good and Bad fairies present – at least balanced
(linked to Furies reduced to Kindly Ones )
Shakespeare strong women. The Winter’s Tale, closer to gender balance
Leontes – irrational and jealous king banishes , separately, Hermione and her
baby Perdita
– neither dead as he thinks, H survives as statue for 17 years and comes to
life (rebirth?)
Good woman, Paulina, replaces good fairies but magic still needed to bring
Paulina back to life. Her husband had not killed the baby.
Who else shares similar thoughts?
Object relations theory
Winnicott, Klein
Feminists: Irigaray, Mitchell
Jacobs and Green
Alternative readings RE-VISIONING
in order to effect change
Rereading myth in contemporary terms
Could a `parthenogenic complex’ be the obverse of
the Oedipus Complex?
Different/alternative paradigms - equal but different
to the masculine to explore difference
Could add different psychological and somatic
dimensions to ontological discussions of women and
the feminine
Empower women – re-enchant them, free the
feminine imaginary
Broaden discussion psychoanalytical theory