Abstract
In keeping with this book’s task of examining Jung in relation to modern literary theory, Chapter 4 will look at the use of Jungian ideas in response to artistic and feminist needs in the early novels of Michèle Roberts. In Chapter 1 some suggestions were made about the value of Jungian theory for feminist ideas. Consideration of Roberts’ texts will demonstrate the utility of Jung for the evolution of feminist narrative forms. As stages upon the journey to a feminist narratology, Jungian concepts are used in the representation of an autonomous female identity, the female artist and female art, and are constellated in the figure of the ‘virgin’. A fictional motif pre-dating Roberts’ discovery of Jung, the virgin becomes incorporated into Jungian theory as a vehicle for expressing Jung’s structure of individuation and in The Wild Girl1 for the articulation of narrative form. What immediately distinguishes Roberts’ novels from The Chymical Wedding is the determination not to use Jung as a textual master. To this end, the early novels construct a female transmission of ideas through ‘Jungian feminism’2 and formulate Jungian theory in its most deconstructive mode. These novels do not respond to specific texts by Jung and evade the vexed question of animas.
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Notes
Michèle Roberts, The Wild Girl (London: Methuen, 1984), quotations taken from the paperback edition of 1985. All further references are incorporated into the chapter.
Discovery of ‘Jungian Feminism’ occurs between the writing of A Piece of the Night (1978) and The Visitation (1983). This was later confirmed by Michèle Roberts in a telephone call on 9 July 1994. By ‘Jungian feminism’ Roberts principally refers to Nor Hall, The Moon and The Virgin: A Voyage Towards Self-Discovery and Healing (London: The Women’s Press, 1980).
Michèle Roberts, The Visitation (London: The Women’s Press, 1983). All further references are incorporated into the chapter.
Michèle Roberts, ‘The Woman Who Wanted to Be a Hero’, Walking on the Water: Women Talk About Spirituality, eds. Jo Garcia and Sara Maitland (London: Virago Press, 1983), pp. 50–65.
Jean Radford, ‘Women Writing’, first published in Spare Rib, 76, (November 1978), later published in No Turning Back, Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement 1975–1980, edited by Feminist Anthology Collective (London: The Women’s Press, 1981), pp. 259–64, p. 261.
See, Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977). At the time of writing A Piece of the Night, Roberts had read no Lacan but secured a female transmission of male authority by ringing up female academic friends for short lectures over the phone. See, Rosemary White, ‘Michèle Roberts: An Interview with Rosemary White’, Bête Noire, 14/15 (1994), 125–40, p. 127. 10. Michèle Roberts, ‘Outside My Father’s House’, Fathers: Reflections By Daughters, ed. Ursula Owen (London: Virago Press, 1983), pp. 103–11.
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© 1999 Susan Rowland
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Rowland, S. (1999). Jung and Feminist Narrative: Romantic Virgins in the Early Novels of Michèle Roberts. In: C. G. Jung and Literary Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597648_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597648_5
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