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Husbands and Gods As Shadowbrutes - Beauty and The Beast From Apul
Husbands and Gods As Shadowbrutes - Beauty and The Beast From Apul
English
Winter 1988
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But now Amor, having recovered from his burn, comes
to her rescue, puts the mysterious sleep back into the casket and sends her on to his mother. Then he goes to Jupiter
to overrule Venus, make Psyche a goddess and recognize
her marriage to Amor. Jovially, Jupiter agrees, and the two
live happily ever after. They have a daughter named
''Pleasure" ("Voluptas") (VI, 20-26; Graves 140-143).
The allegorical possibilities of this story were recognized as soon Apuleius wrote it. After all, the heroine's
name is Psyche, meaning "soul" in Greek, and she becomes
a goddess through the mediation of erotic love, that desire
to possess and increase the good and beautiful by which
Plato said the soul could be united with divine (Frost 8087).
On the other hand, the allegorical weight of the name
"Psyche" was less heavy for Apuleius than for us. In Greek
it also means, "butterfly" (Purser 76) or "moth" (Neumann
168). It is linguistic fossil of the ancient belief in the soul as
a winged birdlike or mothlike creature which flies out of
one's mouth on one's death. As a woman's name, it had
both beauty and mystery, and allegorically would have
been no more heavy-handed than such modern names as
Rose, Lily, Dawn, Jewel, Pearl, Ruby, Hope and so forth.
In any case, there are other reasons for taking the story
as an image of human love. Cupido, or Amor, was the god
of love, especially human sexual love. Many aspects of the
story Apuleius tells work better if we see contemporary
Roman society through his gods instead of expecting them
to represent the true divine -Apuleius's or ours.
Probably Apuleius did believe in a true divine and
cared how humanity interacted with it. Graves, for example, claims that the Metamorphoses "is as moral a work
as the Confessions [of Augustine]" (xx). At the conclusion
of the work, Lucius, the transformed ass, solemnly converts to the religion of Isis, who is described in a passage
of great poetic beauty as the sole manifestation of all gods
and goddesses ("deorum dearumque fades uniformis" XI,
4; Graves 264). This section is thought to be autobiographical. But Purser argues that the conversion did not last, and
that the concluding reconciliation with Isis was tacked on
as a sop to Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, who were
struggling to some semblance of sobriety to their culture
(xx). Apuleius was, as Purser puts it, "a fashionable
sophist," skilled at adorning both his arguments and his
tales with lively detail, but not so much at penetrating their
depths. At any rate, even by Graves' interesting analysis,
Apuleius' moral values are quite different from
Augustine's; they were elitist and would not have impelled him to make his story clear for an unlearned
audience such as ourselves. (With all our modem sophistication we do not know half the things he would have expected of an educated person in his own time.)
Perhaps that is why his "Cupid and Psyche" does not
support a consistent philosophical or theological inter-
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forms which so offended the Platonists, is actually begging
for more, and none too subtly at that. He ends by implying that he will be Amor's rival for Psyche's love, unless
Amor finds another beautiful girl soon (VI, 21; Graves 141).
Why those who consistently do the will of Amor in private
feel they must rail at him publicly is a secret that neither
the gods nor the Roman aristocrats will tell.
So in fruitful confusion we see Amor's beast-form can
be justified mythologically and philosophically through
his nature as a love-god, while his motive for using it is
best understood in human terms: an impetuous youth is
struggling to gain independence of his mother who does
not wish him to grow up. Marrying a girl of a lower class
is an excellent way to do this, particularly if she is so
beautiful that she makes his mother angry. That he can
only woo his bride with threatening oracles comes about
because, in a culture where his family ought to be arranging a match for him, he is striking out entirely on his own,
and he has not developed the finesse for these delicate
negotiations.
Less easy to explain are his motives for remaining unseen, for leaving Psyche alone all day, for fleeing from her
when she shines light on him, and for returning to her in
the end. Obviously many theories based on philosophy
and theology are possible, (some will fit with many aspects
of the story but none that I have discovered will fit entirely with the whole story as Apuleius tells it) but there is no
room to review them all here. Those which relate to human
interactions are best illuminated by comparison with the
parallels. Sometimes distant parallels can be as illuminating as close ones.
For example, there is an Eskimo tale which curiously
reverses "Cupid and Psyche." It involves a beast-marriage.
The daughter of a family wanders off and disappears.
Months later she returns to visit her mother, secretly carrying a reptilian baby which her horrified mother sees her
nurse at her breast. The daughter warns her mother that
her husband is "not of the human kind" and tells her that
she must not try to discover where her daughter lives. The
mother does, however, and the girl's two brothers ambush
and kill the reptilian husband. They bring the girl home.
She remains with them for a while, but presently wanders
off again. This time she never returns (Rink 186-88).
This tale reminds us that beast-marriages are imaginable where the beast does not have a human form, and
where they occur, it is as likely that the that the human
spouse will become brutalized as that the beastly one will
be humanized. For every beast-husband who would be
transformed into a man by a beautiful woman, there is
another beast who would devour her or tum her into a
beast instead, and for every woman who would help a
transformed beast to humanity, there may be another who
would like him better as a beast. Here we may consider
Apuleius's source for The Golden Ass, whose ending
Apuleius mercifully did not incorporate into his narrative.
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A rich lady falls in love with the man turned ass and
seduces him. When he has been restored to his human
form, he visits her again, thinking she would like him even
better now, but she rejects him because his sexual prowess
in that form was not as great (xviii). In the "Psyche" tale
and other parallels, the beast-form stirs the reader's sympathy because it is balanced by the human form in bed; but
the Eskimo daughter knowingly entered a marriage with
a beast and willingly nursed the child from the union. Her
willingness to sink below humanity, or her lack of full
awareness that she has done so, arouses not sympathy but
horror from the reader. Could not the horror of Psyche's
sister be similar? Psyche, in Apuleius' words hated the
beast and loved the husband in the same body ("in eodem
corpore odit bestia, diligit maritum" V, 21; Graves 117).
But her sisters did not know that. Is Apuleius fudging on
his material somewhat?
A Zulu tale illuminates the story from another angle. A
maiden has been betrothed to a prince from afar, but when
she comes to his settlement, she finds him absent. He has
been missing from childhood. However, she is very
patient. She leaves gifts of meat and drink in the tent, and
her shy lover comes to consume them. Eventually he approaches the girl. The first night he touches her; the second
he permits her to touch him. His skin is slippery because
his mother had sewed him into a boa constrictor:' s skin as
a child to protect him from his bestial cousins. However,
at this point, the prince puts off his snakeskin and become
the king of his tribe (Friedlander 131). This story suggests
why a prince with a human heart might be wise to wear
the form of a dangerous beast while he lives in an untrustworthy society. Although this Zulu prince could
depend on a human family to provide a suitable human
bride, we can see that if the mother herself (or her surrogate) is implicated in the cruelty of the culture, the youth
is justified in trying to make a better life for himself by finding a bride from a different social order who does not share
these tendencies.
Suggestively close to "Cupid and Psyche" story, yet still
far away, is the tale of "Golden Wand," which Friedlander
tells (112). Here a merchant's daughter is sent a letter, a
ring, and a basin by an Indian prince. After she performs
a magical incantation which summons the prince, he flies
into her window in the form of a little bird, bathes in the
basin, transforms to a man and is amorously welcomed by
the protagonist. The girl's sisters, observing this, are
jealous. They attack the prince with knives and he flees,
seriously wounded. His mistress leaves her home in pursuit and with difficulty learns the means by which he can
be healed. She heals him; they are united and live happily
ever afterwards.
Here once more we are dealing with a transformed
human-animal rather than a mere beast. Once more there
are jealous sisters who act from spite rather than protectiveness. Again, and more significant, a female protagonist
matures and rises from the rank of paramour to official
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promptly declines. So, to gain time, the father tells the
white bear to come back next Thursday for an answer. In
the interim he convinces his daughter to change her mind,
and she does her best to make herself neat and pretty.
When the bear returns she is ready to go with him.
The white bear carries the lassie on his back to a mountain, which opens and proves to contain apartments much
like Amor's palace. The lassie is waited upon by unseen
servants and pampered with every imaginable luxury.
The white bear is transformed into a man at night and
sleeps with her, but he always leaves before morning, so
that she does not see him in this form. During the day, the
lassie is bored and lonely, and when her husband inquires
why she is pining, she asks to visit her family. The white
bear carries her to her family's new farmhouse for a visit
of several days but warns her to avoid a private conversation with her mother. The lassie obeys for several days but
eventually her mother becomes too insistent. When the lassie tells her mother about the bedroom practices, the latter, alarmed, suspects that the bridegroom is a troll. She
advises her daughter to adopt tactics like Psyche's, with a
tallow candle instead of a lamp. The lassie does, and like
Psyche she is taken by the beauty of her husband, bends
over to kiss him, and accidentally spills three drops of tallow on him. The prince wakes and tells her that if she had
only refrained from looking at him for a year, the enchantment would have been broken and he could have been a
man by day as well as night. Now he must return to his
troll stepmother at the castle "East of the Sun, West of the
Moon," and marry her daughter, who has a nose three ells
long. He flees and their home disappears.
The lassie's search is longer and more elaborate than
Psyche's or Tulisa' s and takes the place of some other trials. Once she arrives at the tower "East of the Sun, West of
the Moon," the "lassie" bribes the troll princess with gifts
friendly people have given her on her travels in order to
sit with the prince at night. The sly troll princess, however,
gives him a sleeping drug, and the lassie has exhausted her
last treasure by the time he catches on and secretly throws
away the drug. He recognizes his bride and the two plot
together to overcome the trolls.
Unlike Psyche, the lassie is allowed to undo directly the
damage she inflicted with her tallow candle, since the
prince produces the shirt on which the tallow fell and
declares he will marry only the woman who can wash it
off. The disappointed trolls die of rage (Dasent 22-35).
In these tales we can see a similar plot logic, accented
rather than blurred by different details. The bride is always
of much lower status than her husband, and always very
young, with no firm opinions of her own about love. She
is brought into the marriage by the authority of her father.
He either sees no need to ask her consent (with Psyche and
Tulisa) or at most concedes her a veto power (the Norse
tale) which she can exercise only if she is truly determined.
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The husband seems to have acquired his beast-form
from conflict with his native social environment, particularly his private life, dominated by a mother or stepmother who wishes to keep him from full adulthood.
Venus seeks to tie her son to childhood and the strong
maternal bond she had when he was an infant, strengthening it by fair means or foul. Basnak Dau' s mother also
wishes to control the kingdom in place of her son and thus
presumably wants to keep him a child, or perhaps to
destroy him altogether (since she is killed in the end, the
hostility between the two must have been deep). The bearprince' s step-mother, lacking the true maternal bond,
hopes to control the prince by binding him to her daughter
while he is still in her power and thus gaining lifelong control over him, while at the same time providing for a notvery-attractive daughter.
The husband's beast-form, thus, represents lack of harmony with his society and its conventions, brought about
by his necessary resistance to his mother or stepmother's
unfair tactics. This forces him to manifest on the surface a
beastliness sufficient to fend off the true spiritual beastliness of his environment. This makes him an outlaw in his
own sphere because only his beast-form is recognized; the
mother or stepmother's coercion is either not perceived or
else it is countenanced by the rest of his society. Hence all
attempts to establish himself in power within his own
family and class are thwarted. However, due to his native
powers, heightened by his aggressive and dangerous
beast-form, he can escape this environment and try to
create one more to his liking, even a family of his own
through his marriage with a lovely maiden of lower status.
His power, whether expressed through threats or offers of
wealth to families whose alternative may well be starvation, is certainly what induces the fathers to hand over
their daughters.
On the other hand, the pampered human life his bride
leads during the day, with all luxuries and no demands,
expresses his own confused conception of the society he
would like to create, and he enjoys the carefree existence
vicariously through his bride though he cannot live it himself. It is too naive and simple a conception but it does express a generous and giving nature much at odds with his
superficial beast-form.2 There are other difficulties with
the arrangement. The bride may reciprocate the love he
gives her in the dark, but she cannot love him deeply
without knowing him better. Nor can she be a full partner
in establishing his new society. She has no understanding
of, let along the strength to face, the dangers which have
led to his beast-form. He cannot be sure she would help
him if she knew, since without testing her, he cannot know
her loyalty. The only test he imposes is the test of restraint,
in not seeking to know him. This is a restraint he needs.
Not having achieved full adult humanity in his own circle,
he may wish to achieve it now, but it is not easy for him to
give up the outward beast-form, the only thing which has
preserved him from slavery. He does not know how to
gain similar advantages from the more sensitive and vul-
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represents divine love to him. However, in her powers, she
is weak and human, vulnerable to fortune, and receptive
to the Beast's pampering. The tale is a beautiful love story,
but unsuitable as a vehicle for the interactions with
humanity of an omniscient and omnipotent god. Can
Lewis really tum this trend around?
Page40
with an even higher price than in Apuleius's. The price is
divine envy and human hatred, but it first takes shape as
human exploitation. The people of Glome know that such
a rarity as Istra-Psyche does not come by accident. There
must be an explanation and a use for her. They begin to
worship her as a manifestation of the dreaded Goddess
Ungit and demand help from her, first small favors, such
as kissing a baby so that she will be beautiful (27-28).
Eventually they attribute healing powers to Psyche during
a plague and a mob bangs on the palace door demanding
her ministrations.
Neither Psyche nor her sister Orual wish to claim
divine powers. Orual asks their beloved Greek slave and
teacher, the Fox, whether there is sense in the demand. He
replies, "It is possible... It might be in accordance with nature that some hands can heal. Who knows?" This is warrant enough for Psyche, who says, "Let me go out ... They
are our people" (31). So out she goes and touches the sick
until they are satisfied and she is exhausted. Then she contracts an illness, which, as Orual sees it, burns her
childhood away (33).
It is never clearly settled whether Psyche had healing
powers or not. No indisputable evidence of Lewis' view
emerges, but from what he does say, it seems possible that
she did. The Fox, whom Psyche had tended, said it could
be. Psyche, in explaining afterwards why she sneaked out
of the palace to help people, said, "For they all said my
hands cured it, and who knows? It might be. I felt as if they
did" (39) Does she mean that she felt "power go out" of her
as Jesus sometimes did (Luke 7:45)? Orual herself seems to
accept the healing as real when she cries, "You healed
them, and blessed them, and took their filthy disease upon
yourself' (39).
That Psyche's touch might have had some healing influence fits well with Lewis' account of her beauty. Merely seen, it could draw people's minds out of fallen nature
and closer to the unfallen nature. Logically,_her touch
could have an analogous physical power and could draw
their bodies closer to their true (healthy) nature and away
from their diseases. Even without Psyche's special nature,
healing by suggestion are well known (William James 96n97) and often associated with royalty or persons of high
prestige. It could well be that Istra-Psyche had some power
to heal and knew it.
But clearly that power was not strong enough to
counteract all the hostile forces which were then united
against her. Soon the people accuse Istra-Psyche of
deliberately usurping Ungit's worship and of bringing the
plague on them instead of healing it. They call her the Accursed (39). Obviously, her prelapsarian beauty is not
enough to overcome traditional ideas. Their goddess
Ungit represents a bewildering combination of beauty and
ugliness, power and cruelty which no wise human would
willingly contend with. When half crazy with fear, they insist on seeing Psyche as her manifestation and demanding
Page41
she comforts herself with the thought that she may actually be marrying a (benevolent) god (71). It takes Orual the
rest of her life (learning partly through her sister's sufferings) to make the same synthesis.
Possessiveness blocks her more than any mere intellectual or intuitive failure; she is so obsessed with what the
gods take from her that she will not heed what they may
give her. Added to this is a powerful desire to dominate.
More noble than her counterpart in Apuleius's version, she
would not begrudge her sister a handsome and doting
husband and every kind of luxury, but when Psyche's
world extends farther than she can comprehend, instead
of letting her go, or even being content to follow her (as
Psyche wishes), she tries to pull her by force back into her
own, no matter how it hurts her. Her device of the lamp is
an attempt to bring Psyche back to heel.
For of course Orual' s failure to see the palace corresponds to her lesser spiritual insight. Yet many things
indicate that their minds are not that far apart, and what
truly holds Orual back is her will not to perceive. After that
first harrowing interview, she is given a glimpse of the
Psyche's palace. Later she wonders why she was given that
glimpse, and just that glimpse, and just when she had it.
She refuses to see the logic of it, but we can. We can notice
that she had just drunk the water native to that valley and
thus become momentarily closer to the divine and that for
a moment she had temporarily relaxed her mental struggle against the gods and was receptive. The same is true of
her fervent demand for a "sign" the next night. Since nothing happens instantly, she assumes her prayer has not
been answered. It never occurs to her to attribute the
clearer thought which comes to her when she wakes in the
night as an answer (150-1) because it is not the answer she
wants. As she snarls in her final "Complaint," translated
by her vision into its true meaning,
Page42
living in a palace which is real but invisible. "I don't well
know what's really, when it comes to the houses of gods"
(136) he says. The Fox, on the other hand, believes that
Psyche has gone mad from all her sufferings and is hal1ucinating about the palace. Her lover must be real,
though, because someone has obviously been feeding her.
Since the only men who could go to that valley would be
outlaws, it follows that he is an outlaw (142-43). Trying to
reconcile these stories without opting firmly for one or the
other, Orual tells herself that both the Fox and Bardia agree
that the lover must be "evil or shameful" (151 ). This is a lie.
It was only to her own jealous heart that both tales said
that. Bardia could never have said the Brute was evil; he
would, in terror, withdraw his own moral concepts from
anything which belonged to the gods. The Fox, on the
other hand, did not believe that there were any gods who
would concern themselves with the flux and change of
human affairs; hence Psyche's lover had to be human.
However, he took pains to debunk Orual's feelings of
shame about this. As he points out, wisely, at her furious
reaction, "There is one part love in your heart, and five
parts anger, and seven parts pride" (148). A good man
.might possibly have fallen afoul of the law, he notes, but
the real point was to rescue Pysche (149).
In either view, Orual's strategy of lighting the lamp is
absurd . If Pysche's mate is the Brute, there is no fighting
him.If her lover were an outlaw, she might be lured from
him, with careful thought and planning, but a simple confrontation with a lamp makes no sense. As the Fox points
out, "[W]hat would he do then but snatch her up and drag
her away to some other lair? Unless he stabbed her to the
heart for fear she'd betray him to his pursuers" (179).
Orual then admits "[N]ow I wondered why indeed I had
not thought of any of these things and whether I had never
at all believed her lover was a mountainy man" (179).
Psyche's temptress is indeed a confused woman.
Unlike the Roman Psyche, Istra-Psyche is not directly
persuaded to doubt her husband's good intentions toward
her. As she expresses it, she chooses to obey Orual not because she suspects her husband is evil but because "I think
better of him than I do of you .. . He will know how I was
tortured into my disobedience. He will forgive me" (166).
But in a fashion she accepts Orual's view when she assumes that only her disobedience can prevent her sister's
suicide. Her husband is elsewhere quite efficient at blocking suicides (279). So in reacting reflexively to the old bond
with Orual, Istra-Psyche shows immaturity, but immaturity at a higher level than the older Psyche's.
The shining of the light in her chamber carries a different allegorical weight than in Apuleius. In the cases of
the earlier beast-husbands, it seems that the maiden was
forbidden to see the human form because her husband was
unsure of it and frightened of its vulnerability. In Lewis's
story, it is not the god himself, but Psyche, who is returned
to the power of others by Psyche's deed. As the god says,
Now Psyche goes out in exile. Now she must hunger and
Endnotes
1 For the convenience of those who prefer to follow translations, I am
giving references to Apuleius both by Book and chapter in Latin and by
page number from the Graves translation. However, Graves's translation
(though lively and as good an interpretation of the story as any I know)
is, word for word, too free for most of my purposes. Hence, all translations of the Latin are mine unless otherwise indicated, and I am responsible for any inaccuracies. (I try to convey the sense, but not necessarily
the exact grammar of the lines I quote.)
2 Erich Neumann and Bruno Bettelheim both see this series of stories
as allegories of the sexual adaptation of a woman to marriage. There is
much insight in both their treatments, but some difficulties too. Neumann
sees Psyche's story as an account of "individuation" (85) in a Jungian
sense. To summarize briefly, he says that Psyche grows, and impels Amor
to grow, from an archaic sexual bond represented by Aphrodite, which
is "dark anonymous love that consisted only of drunken lust and fertility,
the transpersonal love that had hitherto governed all life" (93) to an individual relationship with her husband. Psyche's sisters represent the
man-hating "Amazonian" consciousness, or matriachate (72, 82n ), which
makes Psyche realize the outrageousness of her domination. This results
in a (potentially) violent plot against Amor. However, Psyche then falls
in love with Amor as an individual; he, on the other hand, cannot at first
endure Psyche's assertive manifestation and flees. Only after Psyche
shows that she will undertake daring and arduous tasks on his behalf,
and then sacrifice everything she has gained through her exertions, by
opening the casket of deathly beauty (135-6) can he wholeheartedly
return her love. Neumann's book contains many insights useful even to
those who do not accept his theory. However, his theory that "anonymous
love" was the rule in society before Psyche's exploits either is not well explained or else does not fit Apuleius' treatment (or any other discussed
here) very well. Amor (and his parallels) deliberately separate their brides
from the rest of the world and control the environment in which they live
in all its aspects, not merely the sexual one. These intentions are not
directed toward any other sexual object at that time. There is an individual
sexual jealousy here, even without the intimacy the bride desires, and this
jealousy implies the desire and need for intimacy. The Beast's power to
wrest the bride from her parents and command servants who meet her
physical needs without being satisfying companions implies a society
with a hierarchical structure in which individuals are not interchangeable.
Page43
Indeed, I know of no ancient literature which clearly displays a
human society in which anonymous love was the rule; it is difficult to imagine what one would be like, given the human species as we know it
today, though Medieval and modern authors have tried. The earliest
literature we know already shows some very individual husband and
wife relationships (say, Odysseus and Penelope, Abraham and Sarah).
Though social structures and moral values have changed a lot over time,
human desires seem much the same. Neumann is trying to delve deeper
into our racial history than our literature extends, and if our literature
does not extend that far, one wonders if human consciousness does.
Bettelheim's treatment, in The Uses of Enchantment also assumes the
stories involve individuation. He, however, places more emphasis on the
process by which the marital partners come to accept sex, which they at
first, due to repression, perceive as beastly. The beast-form thus represents the bride's sexual repression, and this is the true reason why, according to Bettelheim, "itis a sorceress" who imposes the beast-form, "and
she is not punished for her evil doings" (283). Bettelheim doubtless had
many tales before him in which this was true, but it happens than in two
out of the three parallels selected here - "Tulisa" and "East of the Sun,
West of the Moon," the mother and stepmother are not only punished but
killed. Furthermore the absence of this element from tales more familiar
to Bettelheim could be explained by another kind of repression, by
moralizers who disapproved of violence. Of such moralizers and their
literary activities there is an extensive literary record.
.
3 I am to some extent slighting the offshoots of this branch of story
which deal with human-divine interaction; for example, the story of
"Patient Griselda" told by both Boccaccio (tenth story, tenth day) and
Chaucer (Oerk's Tale) is clearly related although specifically supernatural elements have been removed. Olaucer has his Oerk deny that the
tale is meant to urge wives to be so patient with their husbands ("For it
were inportable, though they wolde" line 1144). He declares, rather that
it should inspire all people to be patient with what God sends (" ... wel
mooreusoghte/ receyven in gree that God ussent"line 1150-1). He feels
moved to add that God does not needlessly test anyone the way
Griselda's husband did ("But he ne tempteth no man that he boghte/ As
seith Sein! Jame, if ye his piste! rede" lines 1153-4). Of course Chaucer and
the Host both append lines which suggest it would be nice if wives are
that patient. Likewise the story of Loherangrin or Lohengrin the Swanknight is related, and the knight's need to keep his name secret has a
quasi-religious significance since Loherangrin is the Grail-Prince
(Wolfram von Eschenbach 409; 418-420). These stories differ vastly from
one another and from the prototype: quite apart from the lack of the supernatural, Griselda, though greatly provoked, commits no fault, and
Loherangrin never returns to his wife.
4 Not all; Madame Leprince de Beaumont (Johnson vi) omits to explain why the Beast-form was imposed, and clearly exonerates the
mother. In place of this mother-son competition, she puts an allegorical
intention: Beauty is to learn to perceive the Beast's "goodness" despite his
physical ugliness and lack of wit. Though these are valuable lessons, they
are strangely applied to a creature who first makes himself known by
threatening to kill a man for picking a single rose from his flourishing garden.
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Graves, Robert, below.
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Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Trans. G. H. McWilliam. Middlesex,
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Oouston, W. A. Popular Tales and Fictions. London: Blackwood, 1887.
Dasent, George Webbe. Popular Tales from the Norse. New York: Putnam
1908.
Friedlander, Ludwig. Roman Life and Manners. trans. A. B. Clough. London: Routledge, 1913. Vol. 4.
Frost, S. E. Masterworks of Philosophy: Digests of 11 Great Classics. Garden
City NY: Doubleday, 1946.
Continued on page 60
Page60
or corruption of perfection in order to create the various
evil characters in the work. His approach then is one of a
committed Christian and a medievalist.
Above and beyond this obvious conclusion is something much more profound with respect to Tolkien's writing. It is almost a commonplace to emphasize the great care
he has with respect to his use of language. Something that
has not been immediately evident to Tolkien' s critics up to
this time is that he is just as careful with his theological and
philosophical concepts as he is in the creation of language.
This study of evil in The Lord of the Rings shows that once
we get beyond the "good story" aspect of his writing, we
find an extremely complex and carefully worked out
philosophical system. Similar studies could be made with
respect to his notions of God, of justice, of truth, and of
being itself to name only a few possibilities. In each of these
cases we would have to take into account both Tolkien's
Christian background and his medieval scholarship.
.Philosophers have tended to ignore Tolkien as serious
philosophical literature because of its imaginative quality.
It has taken a long time for linguistic scholars to take him
seriously. Some of the theological ideas are easier to draw
to the surface than are the philosophical ones. There is,
however, a fruitful area of study available to philosophers
who are interested in the interplay of philosophy and
literature.
Endnotes
1
Richard P. Bullock, 'The Importance ofFree Will in The Lord of the Rings,"
Myth/ore, Vol XI, no. 3 (Winter, Spring 1985), 29.
2
W.H. Auden, "Good and Evil in The Lord of the Rings," Tolkien Journal,
Vol III, no. 1 (1967), 5.
3
Jared Lobdell, England and Always: Tolkien's World of the Rings (Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1981), 62.
4 Cf. Lobdell, England and Always. All of Chapter III, 'The Timeless Moment in The Lord of the Rings: Christian Doctrine in a Pre-Christian
Age," (pp. 49-70) analyzes thew Giristian influence on Tolkien. Lobdell shows that Tolkien is first and foremost writing literature. This
means that from a theological viewpoint there are some systematically loose ends. For example, the place of Aragom as Christ figure. Lobdell denies this attribution to Aragorn showing that no one character
is a genuine Ouist figure.
5
See Rose M. Zimbardo, "The Medieval Renaissance Vision of 'The Lord
of the Rings'," in Tolkien: New Critical Perspectives, eds: Neil D. lsaaes
.and Rose A. Zimbardo (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky), pp.
63-71 and Jane Chance Nitzche, Tolkien's Art: A 'Mythology for
England' (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979).
6
Otristopher Tolkien in his foreword to The Silmarillion points out that
his father was immensely interested in philosophical and theological
issues (Cf. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Si/marillion, ed. Otristopher Tolkien
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1979), xi-xiv). I believe that he is correct in this claim and that especially Tolkien's interest in philosophical issues has been neglected up to the present. Further references to
this work will appear in the text as S,-.
7
M. Hodgart in "Kicking the Hobbit," New York Review of Books Vol. VIII,
no. 8 (May 4, 1967) claims that "Somewhere in the background of the
war between Gondor and Mordor is the war in heaven described in
Revelations." (p. 11) I would agree with the assessment and want to
say that it is probably stronger than Hodgart acknowledges. This is
especially true if we take Sauron and Gandalf as semi-angelic beings.
Sauron fills the role of the dragon, and Gandalf fills the role of
Michael. Hodgart does not approve of this approach and his general
evaluation of Tolkien's work states that, 'This extreme polarization
of good and evil which is so striking in the works of all three [Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien] is not only reminiscent
Please complete and return as soon as possible the Mythopoeic Society's Members &
!Mytfilore Questionnaires that are included as
an insert in this issue. (See oage 3 Editorial)
Bibliography for Husbands and Gods, continued from p. 43