"Orion"

This short story by Jeanette Winterson was first published in 1988.  It dramatizes contemporary gender wars by retelling one version of the myth of Orion, a mighty hunter, in which Orion meets Artemis, a mythic female hunter, rapes her, and is killed by her with a scorpion. 

Sounds like a feminist revenge fantasy, or at least a representation of an ancient, and ongoing, gender power struggle.  But it’s more than that.

Winterson knows the mythological literature in which heroes are typically male, often hunters or warriors, on a quest for an object or place in the world, or, in the case of religious heroes, for eternal life in another world.  Women in mythology, though they might be goddesses, are typically objects of desire (distractions from the quest), mothers, wives, or helpers to the male heroes.  While the men are out performing feats of strength and courage, women are more often at home tending the hearth.

Winterson explicitly presents the story of Orion and Artemis as “the old clash between history and home. Or to put it another way, the immeasurable, impossible space that seems to divide the hearth from the quest.”

If it’s a simple feminist revenge fantasy, then why is the story entitled after the male “hero,” and why is it Orion who gets immortalized in a constellation, where to this day “he does his best to dominate the skyline”?

If it is simply a representation of the ancient gender binary between quest and hearth, then how is it that Artemis rejects marriage, childbirth, and home-making in order to be a great hunter?  While the original story itself challenges this binary, it also reinforces the polarity as an either-or choice.

By invoking the myth Winterson also reinforces the ancient difference between male and female social roles, but she challenges it by having Artemis, not simply reject the traditional female role, but redefine it in terms of self-knowledge:

“She found that the whole world could be contained within one place because that place was herself… What would it matter if she crossed the world and hunted down every living creature as long as her separate selves eluded her?”

Artemis comes to realize that “Leaving home meant leaving nothing behind.  It came too, all of it, and waited in the dark.”  Quest and hearth are one.  The ultimate quest is the journey to the self.

This wisdom eludes Orion.  For him the quest is all about hyper-masculinity, power, and domination.  Thus his rape of Artemis.

Yes, Artemis kills him in his sleep, and while this act of revenge suggests a struggle between feminist power and masculine power, it is more than that.  After Orion rapes Artemis, he falls asleep, but after Artemis murders Orion, she wakes up:

“Artemis lying beside dead Orion sees her past changed by a single act…She is not who she thought she was.  Every action and decision has led her here.  The moment has been waiting the way the top of the stairs waits for the sleepwalker.  She had fallen and now she is awake.”

When she sees Orion’s body becoming food for lizards, she covers him with rocks to create a high mound, which, when she views it from a distance looks like a monument. 

By rejecting the social norms of her day, Artemis begins to awaken to self-knowledge and to recognize the false binary of quest and hearth.  The gender power struggle overtakes her, but, again, she awakens to new self-knowledge.  Her “burial” of Orion demonstrates respect for his humanity, despite his cruelty to her.  This act of redemption takes her to a new level: “Finally, at the headland, after a bitter climb to where the woods bordered the steep edge, she turned and stared out, seeing the shape of Orion’s mound, just visible now, and her own footsteps walking away.  Then it was fully nigh, and she could see nothing to remind her of the night before except the stars.”

The story offers three larger contexts in which to view the myth and the story that Winterson draws out of it. 

First there is the context of history: the ancient myth transformed into a modern feminist story in 1988.  What future transformations will unfold in history?  “Monuments and cities would fade away like the people who build them.  No resting place or palace could survive the light years that lay ahead. There was no history that would not be rewritten…”

Second is the context of medieval alchemy: “Tertium non data. The third is not given. That is, the transformation from one element into another, from waste matter into best gold is a process that cannot be documented.  It is fully mysterious.”  Artemis’s transformations from gender rebel to self-conscious individual to stargazer could not have been predicted, nor can future transformations to come.

Third is the context of astronomy:  “Every 200,000 years or so the individual stars within each constellation shift position.  That is, they are shifting all the time, but more subtly than any tracker dog of ours can follow.  One day if the earth has not voluntarily opted out of the solar system, we will wake up to a new heaven whose dome will again confound us.  It will still be home but not a place to take for granted.”  For now, Orion still dominates the skyline (though “he glows very faint, if at all, in November.  November being the month of Scorpio.”) But what of that “new heaven” to come?

This past November it seemed a new transformation was on the horizon, but it was not to be.  Orion still dominates the skyline.  But what of that “new heaven” to come?

The Signature of All Things

When I read about Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love, on which the 2010 film is based, I had little interest in what sounded more like a journey of self-indulgence than an authentic spiritual quest.  Perhaps that was unfair.

When a friend recommended Gilbert’s 2013 novel, I decided to give it a try.

The Signature of All Things is also a quest narrative.  The first part reads like a classic success story, as her father rises from poverty in 18^th century England to wealth in Philadelphia through his application of botanical knowledge to the development of early pharmaceuticals.  His daughter Alma is born into wealth and focuses her 19^th century quest on the acquisition of botanical knowledge, not only for practical application, but for its own sake, though she also seeks achievement and recognition in the scientific community.

Alma’s professional quest is paralleled by her personal quest for romantic and sexual fulfillment.  This quest leads her into a misguided marriage in which a mystery arises regarding her husband’s sexuality, and she is as bound and determined to solve that mystery as she is to solve the mysteries of the natural world.

 At this point the narrative becomes like a detective story, as Alma, after her father’s death, gives up her inheritance to her adopted sister and devotes herself to tracking down her late husband’s secrets.  This journey takes her to Tahiti, where her professional and personal quests intersect.

She learns more about her husband (as well as the Polynesian people and the Christian missionary outreach), enjoys a moment of sexual fulfillment, and, through a personal experience, not scientific study, achieves an intellectual breakthrough in her understanding of nature.

Alma develops her own theory of the survival instinct and natural selection but fails to publish it because she feels the theory is incomplete.  Darwin, of course, publishes The Origin of Species in 1859 and later The Descent of Man, achieving world recognition for the theory that Alma had also formulated.

What was and perhaps still is incomplete about the theory is the problem of altruism.  Given evolutionary theory, why do humans individually and in groups, make sacrifices in order to assist and promote others’ well-being, even save others’ lives, often at their own expense?  Multiple theories have been developed to explain how human altruistic behavior might have evolved, but there is still no good account for how it might have pre-evolved in the non-human world. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism#Evolutionary_explanations)

In the end Alma must accept the limits of human knowledge, not only in the intellectual, scientific realm, but also in her personal life.  As much as she discovers about her husband’s secrets, there are unanswered questions that remain shrouded in mystery. 

The historical backdrop to Alma’s story includes the role of women in the 19^th century, the increasing reliance on science as an authority for truth, the colonizing outreach of Christian missionaries, and the conflict between religion and science, of which creationism vs. evolution is but one example.

Western imperialism and race relations also figure in the narrative.  Alma’s father participates in the European western expansion, making his fortune exploiting plant life around the world before settling in Philadelphia.  Alma’s adopted sister, Prudence, becomes an abolitionist, and Alma herself lives among the Polynesians in Tahiti, where Christian missionaries have established a Western foothold.

The novel moves from the Old World of Europe to the so-called New World of North America to the Third World of Tahiti and ends in Holland where Alma, having abandoned her estate in Philadelphia to Prudence, connects with her mother’s Dutch family. 

This movement parallels Alma’s own journey of exploration, expansion, and discovery, her almost imperialistic thirst for control through scientific and personal knowledge, and her final retreat and acceptance of limits to the power of knowledge and to her own ego.

But what of the title, The Signature of All Things?  It is borrowed from Jacob Boehme’s 1621 work by that title.  Boehme was a Christian mystic who argued that God had imprinted a message in every plant and flower, a kind of secret code that he called “the signature of all things.”  Similar to 19^th century Transcendentalism, nature is an outward expression of spiritual truth.  In this view, science becomes a way of reading, not simply the material world, but the mind of God.

Alma is a scientific materialist, but she marries Ambrose, a Christian mystic who follows the teachings of Jacob Boehme.  Turns out Ambrose wants a chaste marriage, or as he calls it a marriage blanc, much to Alma’s disappointment.  It also turns out that Ambrose is most likely a repressed homosexual, who has displaced his sexuality into religion.

This dilemma results from a huge miscommunication between Alma and Ambrose, leading them to think they are both on the same page regarding the expectations for their marriage.

The friend who recommended Gilbert’s novel to me pointed out that this misunderstanding is only one of many mistakes Alma makes when it comes to “reading” other people.  As brilliant as she is when it comes to unearthing the (material) secrets of nature, she is clueless when it comes to understanding human beings.  And perhaps herself.  Her obsession with knowledge and control may well be a displacement of her own frustrated sexuality into science.  Does her blindness to humanity prevent her from seeing beyond the material world to spiritual truths?

Perhaps, but in the end, having been chastened by the recognition of her failures in human relationships, Alma comes to respect those, such as Alfred Russel Wallace, who see in science a religious revelation, and to accept her own limitations, neither converting to a religious world view nor denying spiritual reality.  In the final image of the narrative, Alma is leaning against a tree, held up by it really, as if nature were all she needed for support.

The Signature of All Things is a kind of historical novel in that it features actual historical personages, such as Captain Cook, Jacob Boehme, Charles Darwin, and Alfred Russel Wallace, as well as the backdrop of Western imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy, women’s roles, sexual repression, and class privilege in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries. 

We know now that there were important women scientists, activists, and leaders in history who remained invisible until 20^th century feminist scholars began lifting them up.  Gilbert’s novel offers an imaginary portrait of such an invisible woman, who resists almost every female stereotype of its time period.  Far from conforming to the Cult of True Womanhood (domesticity, piety, purity, submissiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Domesticity), Alma is professionally active, atheistic, sexually alive (if not fulfilled), outspoken, and assertive.  At the same time the novel presents a realistic version of the classic quest myth with a classically larger-than-life and classically flawed heroine.

Dracula III

Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897 at the height of cultural anxiety over changing sexual mores and the social role of women. During the 19th century, a major debate raged over the social role of women, their legal and political rights and their sexuality.

The novel captures some of the ambiguity with which the so-called “new woman” was viewed. While Lucy is almost entirely a damsel in distress, at Dracula’s mercy and completely dependent on others to save her from him, Mina becomes an active participant in the quest to hunt down and defeat Dracula, at least up to a point. Lest her active participation cause too much anxiety, at a certain point her role is diminished, and then, she, in turn becomes Dracula’s victim. As such, it is the men who finally take over the role of saving her and destroying Dracula, except that, under hypnosis (a semi-conscious state), Mina is able to connect with Dracula psychically and provide information on his whereabouts.

Thus, while the novel presents the image of an active, intelligent, capable woman, able to take care of herself and others, it reverses itself and reduces her role before it concludes, as if to reassure its late 19th century readers of women’s traditional role. Similarly, those readers, while titillated by women’s sexuality, needed to be reassured about female modesty and innocence.

One of the most anxiety-producing dimensions of the 19th century debate over the “new woman” had to do with women’s sexuality. “Victorian” women of good reputation were not supposed to have sexual feelings. Sexual desire was reserved for men and for “low” women. Dracula disguises its sexual content by substituting the oral exchange of blood for the genital exchange of semen.

The female vampires who swarm Jonathan Harker in Dracula’s castle are seductive sexual temptresses, like those “low” Victorian women, who the respectable Harker resists.

Lucy, Dracula’s first victim in London, is portrayed as a more refined and proper temptress who strings several suitors along before choosing one. Dracula attacks her in her sleepwalking state, a symbolic rape, functioning as a displacement of Lucy’s own repressed desire, which can only be expressed while she is an unconscious victim.

The more responsible and capable Mina, while vulnerable to Dracula’s power, is more resistant, suggesting either a weaker sexual desire or a stronger conscious control or both. Ironically, the more traditional woman character is portrayed as more sexually receptive, more akin to the “low” woman, than is the “new woman.”

In any case, woman’s sexuality is thus able to be openly represented but only through indirect means, which displaces it to the monster outside instead of the desire within, thus reassuring us of women’s innocence. Significantly, both women spend much of their time in the novel in a less than conscious state, Lucy asleep and Mina under hypnosis.

The vampire can be traced back to the “incubus” figure in ancient mythology, a supernatural being that rapes women in their sleep. The female “succubus” similarly seduces men as they sleep. These mythical creatures provide an explanation for sex dreams and/or orgasms during sleep, an explanation that conveniently removes responsibility from the sleeper. Perhaps our anxiety over human sexuality is universal.

Then again, perhaps it is both universal and specific to our own historical time and place. Why the upsurge in popularity of the vampire figure during the 1980’s? Could it have had anything to do with the AIDS crisis and increased anxiety over contact with bodily fluids? Why the recent popularity of the Twilight series among teenagers? Again, could it have anything to do with the post-sixties reaction to sexual promiscuity and the rise of abstinence-based sex education programs? The vampire boyfriend who loves you so much he won’t bite your neck is a substitute for the real life boyfriend who loves you so much he won’t ask you for sex.

In all its many variations the vampire seems to speak to our human fear of ourselves.