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Academy
for the Study of the
Psychoanalytic Arts
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Woman
- the Neurotic Faery A transpersonal psychology perspective on writing gender
“The clergyman took his clasped Bible from his pocket, and read the
following words: ‘If a woman vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself by a bond, being in
her father’s house in her youth; and her father hear her vow, and her bond
wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her:
then all her vows shall stand, and every vow wherewith she hath bound her soul
shall stand.’” (Scott: 1996, 297)
This is a fictional situation as given by Sir Walter Scott in his The
Bride of Lammermoor. As such, it reflects the author’s anxieties in
relation to perceptions of the real. The action pattern of Scott’s story
resembles the Celtic regeneration myth. I am concerned with how myth and writing
attempt to explain reality, the former as a harmonization of the individual with
nature, the latter as contextualization of the individual within a tradition of
thinking the real in structural terms. Of course the psychological experience of
myth differs from culture to culture. The analysis I am attempting has therefore
limited applicability. It is however justified by the large circulation of the
Celtic regeneration motif in the world’s culture in various forms, from the
Arthurian legends to Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet. Perhaps the following discussion may be useful in a psychology
study framework that addresses issues of feminine identity in societies based on
a Western cultural model of love and marriage.
Fictions
of love and marriage in Scott’s case result from a tension between impulsive
behaviour and rationalizing regulation determined by social pressure. I
associate impulsive behaviour with myth. One behaves impulsively under the
compulsion of what they recount as mythic instinct, as an inheritance from a
tradition of perceiving the real in mythic terms. But the old myths of the
folkloric tradition become in contemporary culture social myths. They are
versions of the old myths that stem from social practice. They require social
adherence to stereotypes and faith in the validity of the social system.
But
the old myths stem not from the circumstances of the social narrative, but from
the older necessity of grounding the social community in Nature. Different
forces are at work within these myths. They may be stereotypified, but that
means giving up their participatory-integrative function and using them within a
hierarchy of wisdom that presupposes the handing down of knowledge from author
and authority to reader and receptacle. The older myths, those that aim at
producing an epiphany, have much more to do with feeling and unreason. Since
epiphanies are forbidden under the rule of reason, i.e. reason takes control
over natural impulses and desires, myths are downgraded to fiction, and fiction
produces schizophrenia. One pretends to be real within reasonable abstractions
from the reality of nature which is to say that one pretends to be a real self
under external circumstances that define what counts as self (as traditional
psychology does). This is not to say that all literature is schizophrenic. Many
contemporary writers aim to recuperate the participatory-integrative function of
mythic narratives. Narratives don’t necessarily have to be textual, i.e. built
on the relationship between signified and signifier. Signs attempt to regulate
nature as constructions of reason, within the logics of sciences. And so we have
“the letter of the law” guiding us towards an ideal of the self, the resone
d’être of a cultural elite. Parting with the conventionalisation of experience in writing does not imply distancing from forms and contents. But it implies moving into a realm where forms and contents do not depend on the cultural tradition writing invokes. One may be taken through the written word into a dynamics that transgresses the cultural text Epyphanic
myths are not beyond culture, transcendental. They are our relations with
nature, and they constitute a certain kind of culture when integrating the
social with nature. But this has not been the project of psychology until very
recently. Traditional psychology adjusts nature to the social, it appendixes
nature to reason so that if it can’t know nature, it can at least limit its
invasion of social life. Traditional psychology builds a fiction of nature as a
form empty of content. It calls nature unknown, unconscious, instinct. Therefore
nature can no longer in-form consciousness. Instead consciousness forms nature
as ideal re-presentations of the self in the no-man's-land of fiction. Fiction
by definition excludes reality. The practice of narration as fiction shuts down
the thrust towards unreason. The practice of myth narration as storytelling, as
function of mythic revelation by social communion with nature, claims reality as
larger than reason.
In
Scott’s fiction feeling is carried into structural form as much as form makes
one aware of mythic content. In establishing an analogy between fiction and
neurotic behaviour, I hope to draw attention to how “fiction” in a medical
context impedes on successful psychotherapy, and to how the use of the term
“neurotic behaviour” limits the efforts of identity construction
- in a transpersonal psychology framework.
Scott’s
story is an account issued in a process of re-cognition of mythic instinct
within the space of reason. Scott deals with two power sources: myth and reason.
They articulate different power fields unto which subjective reality is grafted.
What I am interested in is, on the one hand, Lucy Ashton’s fictional case of
neurosis, and on the other, Sir Scott’s case of creating a situation where his
own neurotic state of mind modifies the parameters under which his discourse
proceeds. Thus, Scott’s attempt to exorcise the Goddess Queen of Celtic myth
into the space of reason by masking her as “fictional” Lucy creates a
dynamics of forces that undermine the writer’s status as a legitimate
authority figure in relation to his narrative.
I deal with two subjects; both predicate upon their own realities: that
of fiction and that of reasonableness. Their behaviour modifies under the
circumstances and pressures each has to confront. For Scott, the creation of
Lucy as a character in his book is the result of a process of moving mythic
content into narrative form.
The quote opening this evaluation is from the Presbyterian Bible, as
rendered by Sir Walter Scott. It constitutes a stable reference for both cases.
Its prescriptions confront both Lucy Ashton and the writer. Yet the pressures
they effect are applied differently to different aspects of consciousness: for
the writer, they apply unto the content of his consciousness, while they also
apply unto Lucy as a form of Scott’s consciousness.
The individuals under scrutiny are taken as subjects of their behaviour,
and their behaviour predicates upon their respective realities. Lucy being drawn
from myth, it is mythic content that in-forms her as something added on to
consciousness content provided by the writer. In reference to myth, Lucy remains
an open-ended subject, but one which is entirely contained within the writer’s
consciousness. Thus an open-ended breach is effected within the space of
consciousness otherwise controlled by reason. And this breach is open up for
social investment. Being both myth and structure of reason, Lucy appears
schizophrenic. The cultural authority designates her existence as such. In being
a mythic archetype of woman, with which woman is supposed to resonate and
identify, Lucy offers but a schizophrenic discursive position for woman to take
up. From different perspectives, various meanings can be invested in her. Thus
she may be for Scott an awareness of his own femininity which he represses. She
may be taken as the avant-garde of another reality threatening to take over the
reality of reason. Or she may be the offering of a discursive position on the
threshold between reason and myth, offering a liberating perspective unto a vast
beyond.
In
any case, as a creature made of both myth and reason, Lucy’s ambivalence
threatens the stability of an well-anchored narrative. By looking into how this
narrative is anchored, and into how Lucy functions as a form built unto a woman
mythic archetype, one can draw conclusion as to what social repression is at
work towards the writer’s consciousness, his discourse, and the positioning
the latter effects upon the reader. Obviously
Lucy Ashton haunts Scott’s awareness. Scott’s psyche can therefore be
investigated by looking into Lucy’s. Yet even given that Scott is the author
of a fictional narrative version of Lucy, he is not the owner of the meanings
she may make available for an audience. As a mythic figure, she resonates with a
deeper instinct, whose forces and dynamics make different ontological claims
upon one’s consciousness.
In Scott’s story, Lucy Ashton has promised herself to an apparently
disrepute aristocrat, in spite of her parents’ decision; she has promised
herself to an other. Consequently, she is being fed prescriptions of patriarchal
order so as to give up her previous engagement in order to marry the one her
family has predestined for her. Her behaviour changes under the authority of her
father, who acts under the authority of God.
In a meta-narrative perspective, Lucy as Scott’s creation obeys his
authority as well. Inasmuch as God disposes of the realm He created, Scott
disposes of the fictional realm he has instituted. Lucy is a woman that, in
vowing unto God, has vowed unto Scott, her creator. As the Biblical passage
permeates Scott’s discourse, we find Lucy obeying a God distilled in the
writer’s consciousness, who assumes to have, and uses the creative powers of
God-the-Father. And God-the-Father sympathizes with God-the-Writer.
Further on in the text, Scott quotes the Presbyterian Bible again:
“(…) “But if her father disallow her in the day he heareth; not any of her
vows, or of her bonds wherewith she has bound her soul, shall stand: and the
Lord shall forgive her, because her father disallowed her.”’” (Scott:
1996, 297)
This tension creates ontological confusion. Lucy as Goddess Queen
requires an acceptance of mythic narrative as foundation for the real. While
Lucy as character in a 19th century novel (furthermore, a romance)
requires her reading as fiction, a product of fancy whose realism has to be in
accord with valid social rules that confer her credibility and verosimility.
Writing and reading the Goddess Queen as Lucy requires a questioning of the
ontological foundations of one’s consciousness. Is one’s reality true in the
mythic sense, or true in the socially reasonable sense?
After all she is “in her
father’s house” in Scott’s text. He “hears”
her “vow” and he holds “his
peace with her”. Therefore, under the pressures of religious law, Lucy’s
vows “shall stand”. But her vow is
a pledge whereby she “hath bound her
soul” to young Ravenswood. Can the writer himself rule against his
character’s vows? According to the pressures of religious order he cannot. It
appears that Lucy Ashton embodies a kind of freedom that renders her in excess
of the character assigned her in Scott’s book.
Yet this is a freedom the writer cannot speak about. The conventions of
the narrative make it impossible for Lucy to be credible as an entity larger
than a conventional character. The Goddess Queen is silenced. What remains is a
sense of her presence that evokes other possible functions of narration, that in
fact existed in the ancient community. The socially enabling function of mythic
storytelling, whereby the real can be conceived as a reflection of bodily
rhythms harmonized to those of nature, yields to the socially marginalising
function of literature as constitutive of cultural authority, under the control
of sterile but powerful “fathers”.
But Lucy Ashton seems to have the power to cancel Scott’s authority, or
better put, that which in Scott’s consciousness accords reasonableness to her
ontological status. She seems to be able to a certain extent to resist the
manipulation effected by the conventions of the text. Yet our perception of her
freedom, which depends on the extent of being able to perceive her as goddess,
will be inevitably deformed and denatured by what we accept as a standard of
normality for the process of reading. Scott forbids himself and his audience a
different perspective.
If
we consider Lucy Ashton as an entity in excess of herself as character in a book
it seems that she is free to “bound her soul” beyond the boundaries of what
the writer prescribes. What needs clarification at this point is the definition
of Lucy’s “soul”. And so we may find out what lies in Scott’s mind that
cannot remain under his conscious control and the extent to which her presence
is the consequence of Scott’s effort to know himself as the possessor of an
awareness that exceeds the framework of reason.
The intelligible and visible Lucy appears as a simile for the Goddess
Queen, with difficulty intelligible, and invisible. The discursive posture she
provides for woman renders woman as intelligible and visible only within a space
of masculine manufacture, where intelligibility is the result of structural
reasoning, and visibility is accorded only within the agreement between social
being and social law. Woman as Goddess of Creation can be recuperated in the
institution of an archetypal imprint, but it is an incomplete recuperation. It
recuperates only form, not content. It recuperates the Goddess’s social
function, by positioning her in a household economy of the specie that permits
scientific probing. Freud and Jung will probe. Woman can imagine herself as
Creation Goddess but cannot be Her. Her inner rhythms and impulses have been
channeled towards an ideal of woman. Woman’s
mythic self, offering her the possibility of perceiving herself as creation
goddess is not given provision within the definitions of the real in the space
of reason. While God-the-Father as master of narratives of identity remains a
visible and reasoned out position in the discourse of social practice, the
Goddess Queen is only attributed ontological status as fictional character. Her
reality as myth remains difficult to grasp, possibly only in the form of a
vision, in an altered state of consciousness that hints at conceptions of
irrationality and insanity. Hence woman’s invisibility as granter of
ontological ground, and the marginalisation of her claims unto the real in the
social space.
The direction of Lucy’s pledge might reveal the cause of the writer’s
unsettled consciousness: young Ravenswood.
He is a descendant of one of the oldest families in Scotland.
He
claims Lucy Ashton from his “mortal enemy”, Sir William Ashton, who has
usurped Ravenswood’s father’s seat in the castle of the old family, by legal
machinations and stratagems. The story evinces the Celtic mythological action
pattern with which Walter Scott was extremely familiar (his version of Robin
Hood’s adventures is more than enough evidence). Let me remind it here: the
Goddess Queen is stolen from an old Champion who is the master of the Court, and
often the Queen’s husband or father; she runs away with a young Challenger but
is eventually returned to the Champion. The question of seeing Lucy as Goddess
Queen or as daughter in the familiar mundane raises the question of different
modes of knowing, with implications in direct social practice. It also brings
into discussion the issue of medical knowledge: traditional psychology’s
claims to knowledge function within the space of reason, based in a
consciousness rationalizing project, and therefore is badly equipped to deal
with the complexities that mythic insight require from the knower. Under the
pressure of his age’s mode of knowledge, Sir Walter Scott faces the dilemma of
choosing between mythic insight and rational sight as two different modes of
knowledge, and the way this struggle manifests in the space of discourse betrays
a neurotic state of mind determined by a perceived threat upon the writer’s
subjective identity structure.
I would argue that Sir Walter Scott sees himself impersonated in Sir
William Ashton. Scott is the master of the fictional space he has created. In a
sense he is Lucy’s father. Legitimization comes with Biblical tracts, whereby
a daughter obeys her father as if he was the representative of God’s
authority. Scott’s narrative functions as a process of exorcism whereby Lucy
as mythic self is banned from the writer’s consciousness. Possibly she is
relegated to the status of substantiating an archetype. And this process
functions within a certain cultural context that prescribes discursive power
lines. Fiction becomes a way of re-processing myth to the purpose of redirecting
its social spiritual functions towards a structural schema that breaks with a
past tradition of literary social life: that of enacting myth in storytelling.
Fiction appears as a distortion of myth.
However, Lucy, who seems to be an entity exceeding the structure of a
fictional character, has promised herself to Ravenswood. Therefore, Ravenswood
challenges not only Sir William Ashton’s authority, but also that of the
writer. Being nevertheless the writer’s creation we must assume that
Ravenswood impersonates something that haunts Scott’s awareness – something
that seems to possess an uncontrollable force that, even though rooted in the
writer’s conciousness, challenges his settled awareness and the order that
governs it. It triggers an awareness that probes beyond stereotyped roles of
author, audience, and character.
When confronted with Miss Ashton’s written commitment to another,
Ravenswood exclaims:
“’And is this all? Said Ravenswood, looking at Lucy – ‘Are you
willing to barter sworn faith, the exercise of free will, and the feelings of
mutual affection, to this wretched hypocritical sophistry?’” (Scott: 1996,
298)
What haunts Scott’s consciousness is a mythic reality that gains an
usurping foothold in the space of awareness. It is a reality that, even though
evoked by the writer, has a life and pulse of its own. Yet it is a reality that
needs to be silenced or it would be perceived as hostile towards culture.
Literary practice may be an aesthetic harmonization of man and culture, but it
is an aesthetics of silence in relation to myth.
I would like to propose a reading of Scott’s novel that requires an
altered state of consciousness whose forms and contents are those of myth. In
doing so I hope to highlight another aspect of how the institution of reason
controls how we feel and act towards woman: it effects practices and experiences
that disallow woman her mythic self, in this case, that of Goddess Queen. The
traditional culture’s idea about the reading of fiction need not be
privileged. It is an attitude inherited from hierarchies that echo the monarchy
of reason. Instead, a multiplicity of readings should be accepted. A
spiritualized mythic reading of Scott’s tale threatens to break with an entire
history of literary practice. But the burden of history makes living in the here
and now a tedious experience.
The
analysis of Scott’s self may bring some clarification about masculine
frustrations versus women characters. Scott’s psychological universe is both
realistic and fantastic. Yet it is precisely the co-existence of both that is
the source of neurotic behaviour.
In Celtic myth, the Goddess Queen is the one who institutes a King as
sovereign in a ritual practice of marriage. She has the power to ground the
social community into reality. She represents an ontological force.
In the cultural practice of his time, Scott could have only been
instituted as sovereign over his fictional ontology (i.e. acknowledged as master
and teller of truth) by male editors and critics. Yet Scott would like to write
about something which resides in myth. He would like to control myth as an
enabling imaginative force. The extent to which one is able to live myth in
reading Scott’s book is the extent to which the reader is drawn beyond a space
under masculine control. Possibly, Scott is afraid that Lucy Ashton might grant
his work the ontological status of a derisive tale, a hilarious and deformed
version of the truth.
His fears reflect that the process of self-fulfillment that grants an
author his authority might be endangered by an alternative reading that tips the
scale of measuring truth towards a woman’s ability to render it.
This awareness exists in the writer’s psyche. It manifests as a force
questioning the very ontology of his consciousness. The archetype of the Goddess
Queen cannot be fleshed out without invoking her mythic powers. Both Ravenswood
and Lucy will die in the end of the book. And their death ends Scott’s
discourse, robbing him of his authority over a space that no longer exists.
Ending Lucy Ashton is closing the threshold to myth.
Further
transformation and evolution of the readers’ consciousness is foreclosed. In
foreclosing gateways into myth, the cultural practice of Scott’s time denies
woman the chance to meet with her powerful mythic self. In
another sense, however, it is the woman in him that worries Sir Walter Scott and
he must either shut her up or renounce his claims as teller of truth. In other
words, in order to continue writing about the archetypal woman, Scott has to
also acknowledge her presence as a mythic force applying unto his subjectivity,
and as a force requiring his lending the power of self mastering to a woman’s
judgement.
Therefore,
his behaviour towards Lucy will be one of domination and psychological cruelty,
which reflects tendencies relating to the imagination of woman in the space of
culture. The formalization of woman in fiction gives the male author an upper
hand. The reader is not allowed to explore and re-constitute Lucy’s self, but
always only that of the male writer. When this dialectics of truth influence
social practice, one may have to look into the political causes of neurotic
behaviour in order to find solutions.
Lucy’s
Wasting Sickness Lucy
symbolizes the Goddess Queen. As such, she is given consistency by being formed
as a transpersonal archetype. The archetype of woman as ontological qualifier
exists in Scott’s inner being, and in any descendant from a Celtic culture (as
are the Scottish, for instance).
But
let’s have a look at Lucy’s symptoms, as described by Scott. Having been
forced to sign a written engagement with the one her parents destined for her,
Lucy is rejected by Ravenswood. Hence her following crisis: “(…)
she remained for some time in a state of absolute stupor. Yet afterwards, in the
course of the ensuing day, she seemed to have recovered, not merely her spirits
and resolution, but a sort of flighty levity, that was foreign to her character
and situation, and which was at times chequered by fits of deep silence and
melancholy and of capricious pettishness. (…) her pulse indicated no change
(…). (…) she was often observed to raise her hands to her neck, as if in
search for the ribbon that had been taken from it[1],
and mutter, in surprise and discontent, when she could not find it, ‘It was
the link that bound me to life.’” (Scott: 1996, 301)
Inasmuch as Lucy is an entity made manifest in the writer consciousness
by invoking her from myth, she is partly embodied as a reality on the threshold
between Scott’s reasonable and mythic being. But she also manifests as an
inherited instinct of mythic feeling, such as makes possible an epiphany. This
instinct is not wholly Scott’s. It is shared as an inherited complex of
transpersonal manifestation in a community of people. Hence Lucy’s
independence.
Yet
in studying Lucy’s symptoms, Scott’s own fears regarding the threshold
between reason and myth become revealed. Lucy’s symptoms of neurosis hint at
Scott’s unsettled awareness, between a realm that bounds him to reason and
another that represents “the link that bounds him to life”. Thus, a
narrative built on a mythic pattern reveals the extent to which the author’s
transpersonal experiences contribute to a state of anxiety determined by the
very conditions that legitimate narratives as claims unto reality. The matter to
be (trans)formed, that of myth, is in relation to reason an anti-matter that
threatens with annihilation.
Scott’s
self-perception remains incomplete, since part of his self has been exorcised as
Lucy Ashton. His self cannot be defined only in relation to the event of writing
Lucy, but requires Lucy’s self to complete it, i.e. requires the event of
mythic epiphany. Yet it is precisely such realization that is forbidden in the
economy of reason. He risks subverting the very cultural relationships he has
established with the cultural institution that guarantee his position as author,
and his seat in the gallery of the fathers of culture. Fiction that presupposes
the authority of an author is in a sense fascist. The relationships between
writer and fiction show a kind of psychological fascism whereby the attempt to
formalize nature seems to have sadistic overtones. Thus, the
institutionalization of a cultural practice that distances one from myth points
out how the politics of reason affect psychology.
Scott’s
relationship with his un-reasonable self is tense, and his inner harmonization
is not eventually achieved.
Lucy’s
true self is essentially mythic, and as such can only be let into writing also
incomplete. The tension that exists between the realm of myth and that of reason
is the result of a forced integration of the two. Scott and Lucy are strangers
in each other worlds. They can only meet as authorial voice and character in the
space of fiction (which is neither fully reality nor myth). They can only meet
as incomplete entities. The harmonization of their worlds would help both
selves, yet it implies moving beyond the space where self as a psychological
category can exist. A mythic and a reasonable self within the same consciousness
requires a leap of faith that reason cannot afford.
The
situation is like that of a schizophrenic patient. Trusting the
schizophrenic’s reality is according the patient the chance to build a
positive self-image and to grow confident that both realms can be accommodated.
To condemn a behaviour that seeks identification with a mythic archetype
undermines the patient’s personal way of dealing with a crisis that
essentially develops under the constraints of reason. A positive evaluation of
the schizophrenic’s “unreality” can change his social posture for the
better. A process of continuous mastering and surrendering can harmonize the
schizophrenic self. Mastering reality under reason must meet a point of
equilibrium with surrendering the self to mythic faith.
Scott’s
own solutions to Lucy’s and his own crises are unproductive: Lucy kills her
predestined bridegroom. She rises up against the preordained course decided by
her father. His mythic instinct rises up against Scott’s rationally contained
awareness. And Scott will condemn Lucy in the terms of traditional psychology
based on a system of masculine rational economy of consciousness.
Lucy’s
deformity now points out how mythic instinct can exist but as hysteria in the
distorting embrace of rational schemes. Eventually Lucy was “conveyed to
another and more retired apartment, where she was secured as her situation
required, and closely watched.” Her therapy recalls the institutionalized
medical practice of cutting the patient off the situation that has created the
psychic disturbance, instead of attempting to organically integrate the
arch-space of transpersonal psychic life with the acknowledged rational space of
social being. Lucy’s torment reflects Scott’s troubled consciousness, at
pains to acknowledge a realm of myth within the narrated reality of reason.
Suggestions
for Transpersonal Psychotherapy and Spiritual Reconciliation “The
cares of the medical man were next employed in behalf of Miss Ashton, whom he
pronounced to be in a very dangerous state. Farther medical assistance was
immediately summoned. All night she remained delirious. On the morning, she fell
into a state of absolute insensibility. The next evening, the physicians said,
would be the crisis of her malady. It proved so; for although she awoke from her
trance with some appearance of calmness, and suffered her night-clothes to be
changed, or put in order, yet so soon as she put her hand to her neck, as if to
search for the fatal blue ribbon, a tide of recollections seemed to rush upon
her, which her mind and body were alike incapable of bearing. Convulsion
followed convulsion, till they closed in death, without her being able to utter
a word explanatory of the fatal scene.” (Scott: 1996, 309)
Traditional
psychology can only offer woman a schizoid identity.
The
critique of traditional psychology must take the form of a negotiation between
feeling and reason where the idea of changing personality is not conditioned by
reason. The unknown beyond reason deserves to be accounted for as an open space
where one can get acquainted with alternative social postures not excluding
myth. Scott
cannot accept the changing of his self because of his fear of social
disapproval.
Lucy
cannot become a fully fleshed presence, in complete possession of her power as
maker of worlds because she is cut off from the space of myth and forced into a
masculine narrative that has imported her there only to re-assert a denial of
mythic instinct dismissed as irrational.
Traditional
therapy suggests the isolation of the neurotic and prescribes rest and euphoric
stimulants. It is a way of inducing the patient to accept the status quo of
reason by appealing to normalizing “common sense”. Yet what is required is
the harmonization of the individual with the transpersonal identity they accept.
Spiritual reconciliation may fare much better in these situations, if the
patient’s schizophrenic reality is not seen as alien but as creative.
Educating perception for acknowledging creativity instead of diagnosis
as a basis for defining the real may give better results with patients who find
a better fulfilled identity in a transpersonal space.
In his book, Scott hints at the fact that the rationalization of reality
in discourse forecloses the potential reality carries for the fertile play of
imagination:
Psychology
has long ignored mystical experiences. Yet these are mythic instincts that exist
in everyone. Meditation psychology might offer the necessary tools for
rediscovering mythic thinking.
Lucy Ashton embodies Scott’s schizophrenic longing for a reality
beyond reason, and beyond what was (and still is for men) unreasonable gender
identity. Surrendering his consciousness to an ambivalent feminine principle of
play endangers Scott’s position as the God and father of literary discourse.
Lucy’s death restores the cultural cliché about woman as “the angel in the
house” and allows Scott and his readers to re-master the feminine:
Thus
Scott’s masculine narrative can be assigned to the romance genre; but Lucy
Ashton is as an entity more than a character in the book, which is so because
Scott puts something down on paper which contains more than he actually intended
to put down. It is the legislation of reason, effected upon Lucy by the Biblical
God via Walter Scott (the father of discourse) via the lawyer Sir William Ashton
(Scott’s impersonation as the character of Lucy’s father) that re-codes
Lucy’s mythic status in a process regulated by metacomponents of reason. It is
a process based on selection of forms of reason set to become metaphors for such
feeling as can be culturally accepted.
Yet
Lucy as an entity in excess of formal re-presentation remains to haunt the space
of lawful reason: “’(…) and Sir William, wi’ his gibbets, and his
faggots, and his chains, how likes he the witcheries of his ain
dwelling-house?’”
Lucy
revealed In
Lucy’s absence, the struggle to conquer ontological supremacy doesn’t make
sense anymore. Her death also kills the contenders’ manhood. Scott has nothing
left to write about, no longer has a narrative territory to dominate and use to
assert masculine authority. And Ravenswood thus addresses his servant Caleb:
“’You have no longer a master Caleb’, said Ravenswood (…) ’why, old
man, would you cling to a falling tower?’”
The
mapping of rational schemes unto mythical instinct at best bans myth to the area
of the unknown, if not the untrue. Lucy’s grave bears “neither name nor
date”. Her mother, having raised praises to Victorian rationalization of
feeling outlives all in her family. When she dies “A splendid monument records
her name, titles and virtues, while her victims remain undistinguished by tomb
or epitaph.”
According
to traditionalist psychological practices, Lucy has been banned to the
marginalised realm of the unconscious. The mythic instinct has been contained in
such categorization as “the unconscious”, or the more politically correct
“archetypal”.
But
does the unconscious really exist? Or is it simply part of a narrative of
exclusion? The liminal mythic instinct may be discovered if schizophrenic
realities are validated and the rite of initiation accepted as a manifestation
of creativity.
Thus,
Lucy can only be defined if perceived within the ritual ceremony of a process of
ontological conflict between a realm of masculine, rational, civilized social
reality and a realm of feminine “un-reality” which is in fact a zone of
questioning the legitimacy of the real without transgressing the community’s
limits. It is in fact a process of re-cognition of the real and as such it
should be accorded the chance of becoming socially visible.
The
reality of the schizophrenic is not necessarily neurotic and does not have to
depend on the duality perceptive failure vs. successful perception. It is a
double articulation of subjective perception whereby frustrated social needs are
as many opportunities for investigating alternative options and different
mechanisms of self-realization. It only becomes neurotic when it is classified
as reactionary or antisocial. The duality rational – irrational is only useful
to the extent that it opens up potential arch-spaces that do not have to become
socially excluded.
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