The Not-so-Failed Feminism of Jean Auel
The Clan of the Cave Bear and the three other novels in Jean Auel's Earth's Children series are surprising best-sellers. They blend carefully researched and detailed accounts of the making of flint tools, the construction of lodges from mammoth bones, and the flora and fauna of Europe during the last Ice Age with an almost soap-opera account of the life of a blond, blue-eyed woman named Ayla. Orphaned by an earthquake at an early age, Ayla was raised by a clan of Neanderthals, who teach her to be a healer. When Ayla continues to violate clan taboos, she is exiled, where she meets another Cro-Magnon man and begins a long journey to what is now Eastern Europe to visit his home.
Recently, Bernard Gallagher has argued that The Clan of the Cave Bear constitutes a failed feminist novel. He reports that he initially regarded the novel as a real triumph but is now disappointed in the book. He graciously notes that he is "not suggesting, now, that Auel rewrite the ending to her novel" that sold millions of copies, inspired a rather awful film, and has led to the publication of additional books in the series. But he does suggest that the book reflects the view that relations between the sexes are "a matter of either/or. Either men are dominant or women are dominant." He sees the book primarily as a tale of the conflict between an independent and talented woman and a patriarchal culture that reviles her, yet he argues that the book contains certain elements that prevent it from fitting a feminist category.
I think that Gallagher is too hard on this novel, and that perhaps a reconsideration will enable him to again think of Auel's work as truly feminist. I will suggest that Auel's work must be considered in a wider context—that of the types of humans of which she writes, and that of the other novels in the series. Within that broader context, Auel's work can be considered feminist. Of course, there are a wide variety of feminist theories and approaches (Pateman and Gross). Auel's feminism might be described as one that entails equality of access to political power and occupations, and a blending of gender roles.
Gallagher is correct that Auel depicts women of the Neanderthal clan as quite subservient to men. Indeed, a woman of the Clan must kneel before a man and wait for a signal before she speaks, and must allow any man who wishes, to "relieve his needs" with her. Yet it is not the sexism of the Neanderthals that troubles Gallagher, for he finds Auel's account of the sexism embedded in Clan customs and language to be a truly feminist critique. Rather he makes three arguments. First, in the battle between the sexes, Ayla is given a weak and unworthy opponent. Second, Ayla is described as a classic blond-haired beauty. Finally, the novel ends with the banishment of Ayla for violating tribal taboos.
Let us consider the ending of The Clan of the Cave Bear, in which Ayla is banished by the new leader of the Clan. Throughout the novel, Ayla is unable to always behave in the subservient way that Neanderthal men expect. Although only Neanderthal men are allowed to hunt, Ayla teaches herself to hunt, and invents a method of using a sling that is better than that of any man. When she gives birth to a half-Neanderthal, half-Cro-Magnon child, she refuses to obey an order by the Clan leader to let it die (for it appears initially deformed because of the mixed traits of the two human species). Each of these acts leads to some sort of penalty, including a temporary banishment. Finally, she violates the order of the Clan leader and rushes to the aid of a dying man, and this leads to her final banishment and a declaration that she is "dead."
Gallagher correctly notes that Ayla's independence has led her to banishment, and to her separation from her son. He concludes that "the novel seems to suggest that male-female relationships, by their nature, involve a struggle for power that never ends, a struggle in which someone must be the slave and someone must be the master." And the message seems to be that women who seek to become the master are ultimately cut off from society.
Yet Gallagher misses one important point— this is also a clash between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. Gallagher notes that Auel paints a physical picture of Neanderthals that is a bit more primitive than many current anthropologists would support. Yet he ignores one other fictional characteristic of the Neanderthals—the one that is most clearly an invention of Auel. Auel exaggerates the differences between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon skulls, where the Neanderthal had a smaller frontal lobe but an enlarged rear portion of the brain. From this, she posits the existence of a racial memory that almost dictates the actions of Neanderthals. Early in the novel, she notes that this memory had served the Neanderthals well as the ice advanced and retreated, for they could recall from an earlier period whether new vegetation was poisonous or good to eat. When confronted with a seemingly new situation that an ancestor had encountered before, a Neanderthal would simply remember the course of action that had worked in the past. Most surprising is that these memories are sex specific. Auel writes that memories in Clan people were sex differentiated. Women had no more need of hunting lore than men had of more than rudimentary knowledge of plants. The difference in the brains of men and women was imposed by nature, and only cemented by culture. It was another of nature's attempts to limit the size of their brains in an effort to prolong the race.
These racial memories were associated with an inability to rapidly adjust to new developments. Ayla presented the clan with a challenge, for they could not understand a woman who would hunt. Women of the clan had no interest in, and no facility for, hunting because they lacked the memories. Men were similarly incapable of cooking. Although the notion of a racial memory has no basis in scientific research, the Neanderthals inhabited Europe for 100,000 years but showed no evidence of cultural accumulation—their stone tools did not become more subtle, they persisted in the use of heavy spears for thrusting instead of lighter ones for throwing, and in no Neanderthal site has there been any figurative art.
They were slow to adapt. Inventions were accidental and often not utilized. . . . Change was accomplished only with great effort. . . . But a race with no room for learning, no room for growth, was no longer equipped for an inherently changing environment.
The Neanderthals are shown as mentally limited. When Creb, the Neanderthal spiritual leader, tries to teach Ayla a few "counting words," he is astonished that she is immediately able to grasp abstract mathematical concepts that are beyond his ability. In another passage, Creb and Ayla explore their common past and different future in a drug-induced journey. Creb sees that his people will become extinct, while Ayla's will go on to inherit the earth. Although Creb is portrayed as the most intelligent Neanderthal, Ayla is more mentally agile.
In this light, the unwillingness of the Neanderthals to accommodate Ayla's feminism is a bit more understandable. They are unable to change, and like Topol in Fiddler on the Roof, they bend and bend and finally break. Broud, the young leader who ultimately expels Ayla is a twisted, jealous man who had raped her to gain power over her, but the other Neanderthals who go along with the banishment are often portrayed as caring, decent individuals. They also are unable to accept or understand her behavior, for it is beyond their limited cognitive abilities. What we see in this book is not an inevitable war between the sexes, but a war between competing species of humans. Gallagher's first problem with the novel, that Broud was an inadequate foil for Ayla, misses the point. The book is not about Ayla vs. Broud, although this occupies a portion of the novel, but rather about how Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon humans would deal with an entirely new and challenging situation.
The extinction of the Neanderthals remains one of the most interesting mysteries of prehistory. Some have argued that Cro-Magnon humans killed the Neanderthals, others that the superior hunting tools enabled them to kill off some of the game on which the Neanderthals relied. Still other anthropologists have suggested that the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon peoples interbred, although at least one anthropologist suggests that they would have been unable to produce offspring. Auel seems to suggest that the Neanderthals died out because they were unable to adapt to the end of the Ice Age, because their brains were wired to remember the past and not to plan for the future. Creb and Ayla see that the Cro-Magnon will triumph because of their greater flexibility and adaptability. Auel may be making a more general point that any society that uses past behavior as an invariable guide to present decisions will fail. Auel's novel implies that any society that rejects the innovations of its most creative citizens because of their gender, race or other characteristics, will ultimately perish.
The ending of the book remains a problem, however. Clearly Ayla's banishment is an unhappy event. In a later book she notes that she would have gladly stayed with the Clan as second woman to the jealous leader to be near her son. Is the message of the book that feminism ultimately leads to a loss of family? The last line in The Clan of the Cave Bear is a plaintive call of "Maamaaa!" from Ayla's son. No mother or father can read the ending of this book without a pang of sorrow.
To put this in a broader perspective, it is useful to examine the three additional books in the series that have appeared to date. In The Valley of the Horses, Ayla lives alone in a valley for three years. During this time, she learns to hunt with a spear, and she domesticates a horse and a cave lion and rides each in the hunt. When her future husband Jondalar suffers a deep thigh gash from her cave lion, she examines the stitching in his garments (Neanderthals did not sew) and threads together his flesh. She learns to speak (Auel depicts Neanderthals as speaking primarily in sign language— a point of some controversy today among anthropologists,) and learns to throw a spear more accurately than Jondalar. Jondalar is described as in a manner much like Ayla—tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed and very attractive. Thus Gallagher's second concern, that Ayla is described as a physical beauty, can be seen in a different light. That Ayla and Jondalar must be Aryan beauties is perhaps a concession to the soap-opera part of Auel's market, but it is not a mark of sexism. Presumably Auel believes it is necessary to have attractive characters to help fuel her somewhat predictable sex scenes in the later novels.
More importantly, Ayla meets many other Cro-Magnon people—who act and think like she does. Thus, although Ayla has lost her half-Neanderthal son, she has found people like herself. Jondalar is a feminist ideal man, interested in cooking, anxious to have Ayla help with the hunt, and truly in awe of her abilities. He displays a troubling racism (or speciesism) about the Neanderthals, but he gradually comes to terms with this and accepts the Neanderthals as fully human. Ayla mourns the loss of her son throughout the next two books, although by the end of the fourth novel, she is pregnant again. It appears that the novels in this series are building to a confrontation between her fully Cro-Magnon child and her half-Neanderthal son in the final book of the series. The banishment of Ayla can be interpreted as a rejection by a society unable to change, but it ultimately leads Ayla into a broader Cro-Magnon society of people who think and act like she does.
Consider Auel's view of gender politics among the Cro-Magnon. In the third novel The Mammoth Hunters the pair stay for a time on the plains with a group of Cro-Magnon hunters. This group is part of the Matutoi people, who hunt mammoths. The tribe is ruled by a headman and headwoman, who share equal power and responsibility. Decision-making is by consensus, with everyone taking a chance to speak by holding the speaking stick, and women taking an active role. The larger Matutoi people are governed by a Council of Sisters (made up of the headwomen of the tribes) and a Council of Brothers (made up of the headmen), but the women make the final decision because they are closer to the "Great Mother." All of the Cro-Magnon people encountered in these novels appear to believe in a female deity, and the Danube river is referred to as the Great Mother River.
In the fourth novel, The Plains of Passage, Ayla and Jondalar leave the Matutoi and journey toward Jondalar's home. They visit first the Samu-doi. Women of the Samudoi take part in tribal decision-making, and men help with the cooking while women help with the hunting.
In this novel, however, is the best evidence for anti-feminism in Auel's writings, for Auel depicts a very dysfunctional society ruled by women. Jondalar is captured by the S'Armunai, a tribe in which the headwoman has penned up the men of the tribe in a prison structure. The woman who heads the tribe is mad, and dislocates the legs of young boys as they pass through puberty. She challenges Jondalar to mate with her, and tries to kill him. Yet Ayla rescues him with a perfectly thrown spear. Her domesticated wolf finally kills the demented leader, and the men and women of the tribe cautiously reunite and begin to patch up a relationship.
In some ways, this section reads like a Phyllis Schlafly nightmare. Before Ayla intervenes, the women who rule this tribe torment the men, and all are starving because the entire burden of gathering food has fallen to the women. It is possible to read this story as suggesting the ultimate failure of a society in which women control government power. A more narrow reading might suggest that if angry feminists ever gained power, men would suffer from discrimination, families would be broken, and society would suffer.
Yet there is evidence within this story to suggest that Auel does not intend it as an anti-feminist parable, or at least that she does not mean to imply that a society in which women make the crucial decisions will be dysfunctional. Auel does not imply in this section that women are unable to rule, for Jondalar's mother once ruled his tribe, and the Council of Sisters rule The Mammoth Hunters. Rather, she appears to hold that, like the Neanderthal, the S'Armunai are unable to fully function as a people without the close cooperation of men and women. Jondalar initially is stunned to learn that the tribe would prevent half of its population from helping with the hunting and gathering. Note that Jondalar is unable to free himself, and only Ayla is able to depose the mad ruler, so relief comes from a strong woman, not from a man. Interestingly, the mad woman ruler had been seriously abused by a half-Neanderthal mate, which appears to have caused her mental problems. Auel may intend this section to show that men and women must work together, regardless of previous discrimination, if society is to prosper.
Of course, there are some parts of these four novels that do not strike a consistent feminist theme. We learn that Jondalar's mother voluntarily relinquished her rule of her tribe to her son. Ayla chooses a man to rule the S'Armunai after the death of the mad woman ruler. Ayla follows Jondalar to his home, despite her preference to stay with some of the peoples they visit along the way. These are not utopian novels, and Auel writes for several seemingly distinct audiences. Yet overall, there are obvious elements of an egalitarian feminism in Auel's work.
Throughout these four novels, we see Ayla as a resourceful woman who generally does what she wants. She hunts and heals, combining the traditional masculine with the feminine. Her hunting skills astonish everyone, as do her abilities in medicine. The shamen of the tribes she visits constantly marvel at her spiritual gifts, and she appears to have genuine visions of the future. She is tough but compassionate. She domesticates a horse, a lion and a wolf. She invents surgical stitching, and many other things too numerous to mention. That she is also a beautiful, blue-eyed blond does not detract from her feminist credentials.
In the later novels, she frequently confronts adversity from strength. In The Mammoth Hunters many Mamutoi at a large gathering of the tribes muttered among themselves about Ayla's previous ties with the Neanderthals. Indeed, Ayla faces up to this apparently deep-seated speciesism among the Cro-Magnon at every occasion. In this novel, a half-Neanderthal child adopted by the tribe she was visiting came to the meeting, and Ayla let it be known that she had given birth to such a child. When some of the more speciesist members of the Mamutoi want to expel her, the tribe with which she stayed claims her as a member. Yet it is with a show of power that Ayla wins the battle, for she rescues a girl who appears in danger from a cave lion—the one she had domesticated. The muttering is halted when Ayla mounts and rides a lion that is as large as modern horse.
In The Plains of Passage, Ayla rescues Jondalar by throwing a spear that cuts the ropes that bind him—an accuracy that is almost impossible. She liberates the people of this tribe when her tame wolf kills the woman who ruled. This is a confrontation between two strong women, and Ayla wins by a real show of strength. Where Ayla left the Neanderthals in defeat, among the Cro-Magnon her drive and skills are amply rewarded. After her victory through the tough use of force, she uses her skills as a healer to begin to rebuild the tribe.
Moreover, Cro-Magnon peoples are shown as generally egalitarian in the sex
roles. Jondalar is as interested in cooking as Ayla is in hunting. Women are
consistently shown in real decision-making authority. In contrast, the
now-extinct Neanderthals are shown as sexist and unable to accept women as
equals. Those who are unable to move beyond rigid sex roles are now extinct,
while the more flexible Cro-Magnon are our direct ancestors. Overall, this
seems a strongly feminist message.
Gallagher can resume his respect for Auel's feminism. Her novels may not
portray a prehistoric feminist utopia, but taken in context they have a
strongly feminist message. She depicts a prehistory that is perhaps even more
egalitarian than our present society, in which men and women must share evenly
the burdens and opportunities in order for both to survive.
Source: Clyde Wilcox, "The Not-so-Failed Feminism of Jean Auel," in Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 28, No. 3, Winter 1994, pp. 63-70.
An interview with Jean Auel in At the Field's End
[O'Connell] When you started writing the Earth's Children series, did you have any idea how popular it would become ?
[Auel] No. I hoped what every writer hopes: that the first book would find a market and an audience, and maybe the second one would do a little better. That certainly has happened; it just started at a much higher level. The first printing of The Clan of the Cave Bear was 75,000 books. And the first printing in hardcover for The Mammoth Hunters was a million books. It broke the record. Somebody figured out that that would be a stack of books twenty-nine miles high.
Did you have any model in mind when you wrote these books?
No. I was just trying to write these stories. I'm still writing for myself. I'm writing the story I always wanted to read. As it turns out a whole lot of others want to read it, too. I'm not writing for critics, or to please a teacher or to please the public, or anyone else; I'm writing stories to please myself.
The first rough draft has become an outline for the Earth's Children series. That's why I know I'm going to have six books. People think, "She wrote The Clan of the Cave Bear and since it was successful, she decided to do a sequel."
But this series is not like Clan II, and Rocky III and Jaws IV. It is a continuation, not a repetition. I won't be telling the same story over and over again. I really did know, before I finished The Clan of the Cave Bear, that I had six books in the series.
Do the other books go further into Ayla's life?
All of the books feature Ayla. They are the story of her life. It's not a generational saga, one of those things where you start with the first generation and you end up with the great grandchildren. I'm trying to show the diversity, complexity and sophistication of the various cultures during the Pleistocene. Ayla's story is the thread that ties them together.
Did you base the cave dwelling described in The Clan of the Cave Bear on a particular archeological site ?
Not expressly. It's more like a typical site. It was based in many ways on the cave at Shanidar in Iraq on the southern side of the Black Sea, but the setting is in the Crimea on the northern shore of the Black Sea, because there were Neanderthal caves all through that area. It typifies a Neanderthal setting.
How did you become interested in prehistoric people?
[Laughs] I wish I had a wonderful answer for that. Everyone asks, and I don't have an answer. I started out with an idea for a story. I thought it would be a short story. That was in January, 1977. I had quit my job as a credit manager. I had received an M.B.A. in 1976, so I wasn't going to school, and my kids were almost grown. I was in between, not sure what I wanted to do, in a floating state, which I hadn't been in before. I had had a very busy life.
It was eleven o'clock at night. My husband said, "C'mon, let's go to bed." I said, "Wait a minute. I want to see if I can do something."
An idea had been buzzing through my head of a girl or young woman who was living with people who were different. I was thinking prehistory, but I don't know why. I was thinking, "These people were different, but they think she's different." They were viewing her with suspicion, but she was taking care of an old man with a crippled arm, so they let her stay. This was the beginning. That night I started to write the story. I had never written fiction before. It got to be the wee hours of the morning, I was about ten or twelve pages into it and I decided, "This is kind of fun." Characters, theme and story were starting.
But I was also frustrated because I didn't know what I was writing about. I'd want to describe something and I wouldn't know how or where they lived or what they looked like, what they wore, or what they ate, or if they had fire. I didn't have any sense of the place or the setting. So I thought, "I'll do a little research."
I started out with the Encyclopedia Britannica, and that led to books at the library. I came home with two armloads, and started reading them. I learned that the people we call Cro-Magnon were modern humans. The stereotype of Neanderthal is of a knuckle-dragging ape, but they were Homo sapiens also, quite advanced human beings.
I felt as though I'd made a discovery. "Why don't we know this? Why aren't people writing about our ancestors the way these books are depicting them?" That became the story I wanted to tell: the scientifically valid, updated version.
So you wanted to clear up this misunderstanding?
Also tell a story. It's always been the story first. I discovered that I love being a storyteller. I wanted to write a good story, but also to characterize these people in a way that is much more acceptable currently by the anthropological and archeological community.
Was it difficult to turn this archeological material into a story?
Well, any kind of writing is difficult. Basically, as I was reading those first fifty books, I began to take notes of what might be useful to the story. Then I put together a page, or page-and-a-half outline for a novel. I sat down at my typewriter, and started to tell the story to myself.
Now, if I were to compile a bibliography of my reading for the series, it would approach a thousand entries. I've also traveled to Europe, and taken classes in wilderness survival and native life ways. In terms of the research, I probably read about ten or 100 times more than I needed, until I got so comfortable with the material that I could move my characters around in the story with ease.
I wasn't thinking of getting it published. I was just thinking of the story. As I started to write it, the story started to grow and develop, and the ideas I had picked up in the research were finding their way into it.
How long did it take you to write the rough draft?
It didn't take any more than six or seven months, from the time of the first idea to the time I finished a huge six-part manuscript that became the outline for the series. I had free time then. I didn't have any other demands on my time, except just to live and say hello and goodbye to my husband once in a while. He was really quite supportive. I became totally obsessed and involved and excited. I found myself putting in every waking moment. I'd get up and I'd almost resent taking a shower before sitting down at the typewriter. I was putting in twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.
What happened to the rough draft?
I went back and started to read it, and it was awful. I was telling the story to myself but it wasn't coming through on the page. I thought, "My feeling and my passion are not there." So then I went back to the library to get books on how to write fiction.
After doing a lot of self-study, I started to rewrite this big mass of words. I thought I was going to cut it down. About halfway through the first of these six parts I discovered I had 100,000 words. In adding scene and dialogue and description and everything necessary to write a novel, the thing was growing. I thought, "I'm doing something wrong. At this rate I'm going to end up with a million-and-a-half words." Talk about a writer's block.
I went back and really looked at the six different parts, and realized that I had too much to cram into one novel. What I had was six different books. I can still remember telling my husband, "I've got six books," He said, "You've never written a short story, and now you're going to write six books?"
Earth's Children became the series title, and the first book became The Clan of the Cave Bear.
The series seems to have a very modern sensibility. Is it as much about people today as it is about prehistoric people?
It's about the struggles of human society. My characters are fully human; they have as much facility with their language as we do, which is why I started to write it in perfectly normal English, even though it would have pleased some critics if I had invented some kind of a phony construct of a language.
I think it's more accurate to show them speaking with ease. So I said, "I'm going to write this as though I am translating it from whatever language they spoke into our language." And good translators don't translate word for word, they translate idiom. There were some words I was careful with. For example, you can say, "Just a moment," but you can't say, "Just a minute."
What made these people's lives different from our own?
The world they lived in. There are a lot of things that we take for granted that hadn't been invented yet. But when Ayla in The Clan of the Cave Bear is five years old, she could have been anyone's five-year-old daughter today.
Because we're talking about people like ourselves, it allows me to look at ourselves from a different perspective, through a long-distance lens. I try to see what makes us human. What is basic to being human?
For example, if you plunk somebody down in a hunting-and-gathering society rather than a society where you go into your supermarket and get your meat out of a nice clean plastic package, what will be different and what will be the same? And is one society more or less violent? In most hunting-gathering societies, people feel a great deal of reverence for the animals they hunt. And we who get our packaged, sterilized meat that doesn't even bleed any more really have very little sensitivity to animals.
So there are some definite changes. But there certainly had to be some things that we suffer from, that they also suffered from.
Did you find that you admired these people?
Well, I felt that they were as human as we are, and I admired them, the same way I admire us. Unlike some people, I don't think the world is necessarily going to hell in a handbasket. I think that the human race is a very young race, and I am hoping that we will have the sense to keep ourselves from the destruction that we are potentially capable of dealing to ourselves. For all the stereotype about the brutal savagery of our ancestors, you find almost no evidence of it in the research, not among the Neanderthals and not among the Cro-Magnon.
One of the skeletons found at that Shanidar cave was of an old man. If you read about an old man with one arm amputated at the elbow and one eye that was blind, then you have to start asking, "How did he live to be an old man?" Paleopathologists believe that he had probably been paralyzed from an early age, because there was extensive boatrophy and he was lame on that side. The paralysis may have been the reason his arm was amputated. So he was probably a paralyzed boy and at some time in his life became blind in one eye.
How does that fit in with survival of the fittest? These were Neanderthals taking care of a crippled boy and a blind and crippled old man. Evidence indicates he died in a rock fall as an old man. When I read about him I said, "Oh, my God, there's my old man with the crippled arm. There's the character in my story." That made me feel I was heading in the right direction. He became Creb.
And as you researched this book, did you find that your story grew in a lot of ways?
Exactly. And it was so much more interesting and fun to write within the modern scientific interpretation. I thought, "There's so much to write about, and I'm going to be the one to write it."
Did you do research infields other than archeology?
Oh, yes. Many others. I would wonder, "How did they carry water? What kinds of things will carry water?" And by reading the reports of field anthropologists into more modern societies—the aborigines, the Bushmen, or the American Indians—you find out that water-tight baskets will carry water, or carved wooden bowls, or water-tight stomachs.
I drew from all over the world. If it was appropriate and came together, then that's what I would use. I tried to give the sensitivity, the feeling of the hunting-gathering society.
For example, the idea of ancestor worship: when I was reading about the Australian aborigines, I learned that at one time they didn't really have a full understanding of procreation, particularly the male role in procreation. They knew a woman gave birth, but they weren't sure how she got pregnant. That led to speculation for my story.
I thought, "What if this was a time so long ago, that the male role wasn't understood by most people. What would be the result?" Well, the only parent they would know for certain would be their mother, and her mother before that, and the mother before that, and maybe somebody would think, "Who was the first mother?"
You could see how a whole mythology based on the miracle of birth could evolve. Then I remembered about all these little figurines dating back to the early Cro-Magnon period, these round, motherly women carvings. I thought, "I wonder if they aren't meant to represent a great mother sense." That's how I derived some of the culture ideas.
When you were telling a story, did you have to pick and choose among the evidence to decide what pieces to use?
Of course. For instance, did Neanderthals talk? There are two schools of thought on that. Professor Lieberman at Brown University is the proponent of the idea that there probably was some limitation in Neanderthals' ability to communicate, to talk, verbalize, and Lewis Binford finds little in the archeological record to show that they were able to make the necessary abstractions for full speech.
But their cranial capacity, the size of their brains, was, on the average, larger than ours. And other scientists say that the evidence of their culture suggests that they were able to understand some abstractions. They were the first people to bury their dead with ritual and purpose. Somebody must have been thinking, "Where are we coming from and where are we going?" That gives us a clue that the way they thought might not be so different from the way we think, or at least feel. Emotions such as compassion, love and caring come through most strongly.
So they must have had, if not language, at least. . .
At least a very strong ability to communicate, which is why I came up with the sign language idea. I said, "Okay, I'll take both of these ideas and combine them. I will say, 'Yes, there was a limitation in their language, but not in their ability to communicate.'" Sign languages are very complex. I did some research into that.
So if there's a gap between pieces of evidence, you can bridge the gap with your imagination?
Yes. And sometimes I can push things out. I can go a little farther than a scientist can go, because I am writing a novel. I might stretch the barrier, but I don't want to break through it. I don't want to write anything that would do a disservice to the latest findings of science. I want the background to be as accurate as I can make it. If the basis is factual, then I have something for my imagination to build on.
The character of Jondalar is based on an actual skeleton found at the site called Cro-Magnon, the site that gives the name to the early race. They found five skeletons at this particular site. One of them was of a man who was 6 feet, 5 3/4 inches tall. As soon as I read that, I said, "That's got to be Ayla's man."
Does this attention to detail make the story more believable?
People say, "You're writing fiction. What do you do research for? Why don't you just make it up?" Well, in a work of fiction, even if it's a modern novel set in Washington, D.C., if you're going to mention the address of the White House, you'd better have that address right. Because if all the basic facts that you put down are as accurate as you can get them, it aids readers in suspending their sense of disbelief. As a novelist you want to have readers believe, at least while they're reading the story, that all this could be true.
Where did the information about the herbs and medicines that the people used come from?
I have a research library now of books I've purchased, and I got some of the information from public libraries. We know that they were hunting-gathering people and we know that modern hunter-gatherers are very, very familiar with their environment. Some groups can name 350 plants, know all of their stages and all of their uses. While we don't know precisely what plants Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons used, from pollen analysis and from the way we're able to tell climate, we know what plants were probably growing there because the same plants are around today. Except domestic plants were in their wild form.
Did it give the people any advantage to be closely tied to the natural world?
It would give them the advantage of being able to live in their world. They needed it to survive. That is survival in the natural world. There's also survival in New York City. If you were to take an aborigine, or a Cro-Magnon moved up in time and set him in the middle of the modern world, and if he were an adult, how would he make a living? He wouldn't have grown up in our society, or gone to school. He might have all kinds of knowledge and background but it would not be useful to him any more, and would not have the same value.
That happened in this country to native cultures when the white Europeans invaded and began to settle. For example, the Northwest Coast Indian society was a very rich culture and they built houses out of cedar planks. It is very difficult to split a log and make it into planks by hand with wedges and mauls; it takes knowledge, skill and effort, so each one of those planks had a high value.
Now, if a white settler puts in a sawmill, and suddenly they're whipping out planks at many times the number per day than a person can do by hand, the plank no longer has the same value; it has lost its meaning within Indian society. Culturally and economically the Native-American people were deprived. And that's part of the problem today, the displacement that many of them feel.
What our early ancestors knew enabled them to live and survive in their world. We wouldn't know how to follow the tracks of an animal or when they migrate, but we have to know airline schedules and how to cross a street without getting hit by a car.
Do you use elements of the Northwest landscape in your work?
Oh, absolutely. It was really kind of fun when I discovered, particularly in The Clan of the Cave Bear, that there's a little mountain range at the south end of the Crimea, which is a peninsula in the Black Sea, and a strip of coastland which is Russia's Riviera today. During the Ice Age that was a temperate climate. There were cold steppes to the north, but the mountain range protected the southern end. This small coastal area was a well-watered, temperate, mountainous region subject to maritime influences, not so different from the Northwest. I even discovered that azaleas grow wild there, as they do here.
Did setting the story in that particular kind of landscape create certain constraints?
Well, you can't have a story, you can't have anything, if you don't have limits, boundaries. You can't have one setting that is arctic and equatorial all at the same time. So yes, it puts limits, constraints, but those are usually fairly welcome limits. It gives you a frame to write within.
Was there an abundance of food during that period?
Most scientists and most researchers think that the last Ice Age period was probably richer than it was later during more temperate times. The glaciers caused a certain kind of environment that made for open steppes, or grasslands. Those vast grasslands fed grazing animals in hundreds of thousands of millions. It was also rich in terms of the produce that was available, so there were both animal and vegetable resources.
As the glaciers retreated, the forest started to move in, and forests aren't as rich. They don't support great herds of animals. Instead, animals stay either in small family groups or alone. The deer that run through the forest don't congregate in huge herds like the bison on the plains, and they're also harder to hunt because the animals can find trees and brush to hide among. It's much easier to hunt an animal on an open plain than when it's hidden in the woods.
In forests, there's more tree-growth, but not necessarily as much variety of plant-growth. So when the glacier melted, it reduced the abundance and variety of plant species. In the late Pleistocene, after the Ice Age, evidence of much more use of fishing and shell food was found. Such climatic changes may have caused pressures toward agriculture. The great variety and abundance was gone. Some way had to be found to feed the population.
Do you get a lot of mail back from your readers?
I do get a lot of letters from readers, and I'm very grateful for them. People become quite ardent; there are readers who feel very, very strongly about these books. It's a surprise to me. I'm delighted, but I'm a little overwhelmed. I don't really know what I'm doing right.
I get letters from men and women of all ages, twelve to ninety-two, and all walks of life—engineers, scientists, marines, lawyers, teachers, and people who barely can put together a grammatical sentence.
I even get letters from prisoners in jail. The one that I didn't know quite know how to handle was a letter from a man who said he was on death row, and would I hurry up and finish The Mammoth Hunters so he could read it before he died? I didn't know what to say.
What do you plan to write in the future?
I intend to write all six books in the series. That's an internal pressure. I have to finish telling Ayla's story. She won't let me alone.
And after that?
I may do anything. I may write about other prehistoric people. I may change to a different part of the world. I may write about later prehistoric periods. I may write something historical. I may write something modern. I might write science fiction. I might write a horror story, or a mystery. Who knows? I've got many things that I'd like to try. What I do know now is that I want to keep on writing, but I was forty before I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up.
Why was that?
I don't know. I suspect part of it is that I couldn't have done it any earlier. There are many young people who are fine writers, but I could not have been one. I needed to live some life and gain some experiences. I couldn't have written what I did without having gone through having a family, raising children, accepting responsibility, being out there in the world, working, coming across many different kinds of people and learning how to live with them.
Source: Nicholas O'Connell, An interview with Jean Auel in At the Field's End, Maronda Publishers, 1987, pp. 208-19.
Speculative Fiction
I began hearing about them several years ago, always from feminist friends who said things like "You absolutely have to read these books." Jean M. Auel's "Earth's Children" novels—The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of Horses, and The Mammoth Hunters—have since gone from feminist word-of-mouth classics to a major mainstream phenomenon. Hunters hit the number-one spot on the best-seller list last winter even before its official publication date, and a movie version of Cave Bear (starring Daryl Hannah, with a screenplay by John Sayles) has recently been released. In the era of "Rambo," Auel has given us a resourceful, female superhero.
She is Ayla, a prehistoric Cro-Magnon woman who is orphaned as a small child by an earthquake. Ayla, wandering alone, gets mauled by a cave lion before she is rescued by the Clan—a group of Neanderthals who also inhabited Europe during the Ice Age more than 25,000 years ago. The Cro-Magnons are the precursors of modern Europeans, and Ayla is tall, blue-eyed, and blond. The Neanderthals are short and swarthy, with no chins, ridges over their eyebrows, and flat heads; they accept Ayla—one of the group they call the Others—only with difficulty. In their eyes, she is ugly.
Clan of the Cave Bear portrays Ayla's life in the Clan, which is rigid and harsh for a girl of her spirit. Women are forbidden to hunt (although Ayla learns in secret and becomes an expert); they are taught to be submissive and required to do anything any man tells them, including putting out sexually, anytime and anywhere. (When Ayla refuses Broud, one of the Clan men, she is raped.) People of the Clan produce no art, have no spoken language (although they do communicate in sign language and have ritual storytelling and movements not unlike dance), and are physically unable to laugh or weep; they can't even learn anything new, unless their ancestors have already done it, since their brains are based not on adaptation but on racial memory (Auel's fictional theory of why the Neanderthals died out). When people need to know something about a plant or animal, they don't learn, they "remember" what their ancestors knew—and over time, male and female brains have become so differentiated that men, for example, genuinely can't "remember" how to cook. Religion is also restricted to males (and in one scene, the men ritually eat the brains of a slain Clan hero). While there are some loving (and beautifully drawn) individuals in the Clan, Ayla never entirely learns to fit in. Eventually, as a teenager, she is cast out and cursed—for the sin of talking back to the male leader, the man who raped her, and by whom she consequently has a child from whom her exile separates her.
Valley of the Horses tells the story of how Ayla survives alone for several years (during which time she tames a wild horse and a cave lion, and together they become a kind of family unit), but she ultimately encounters a man of the Others, Jondalar (also tall, blue-eyed, and blond). Through him she meets others of her own kind. The Mammoth Hunters is about one such tribe Jondalar and Ayla attach themselves to for a time. The Others worship the Great Earth Mother, regard rape as a sacrilege, and allow women to hunt. (Jondalar even knows how to cook, although he doesn't do it very often; he also knows how to give Ayla sexual pleasure for the first time in her life—although the 20th century feminist reader might observe that her clitoris only figures in "fore-play.") Ayla, meanwhile, seems to excel at virtually everything—hunting, healing, practical science (she invents the flint fire-lighter, the stitching of wounds, the threaded needle, and a special double-stone slingshot, among other things), spirituality, languages, toolmaking, sewing, cooking. She also discovers that the Others find her uncommonly beautiful. Her only problem in her dealings with Jondalar and the Others is their horror when they realize that she was raised by "flatheads"—in their view, subhuman animals. But Ayla refuses to renounce the people who saved her life.
Beyond giving us a strong female character, Auel's books are rich in technical details. We learn about the plants that an Ice Age medicine woman might use to cure different ills, how to build an earthlodge out of mammoth bones and skins, how to knap flint, how to use mashed animal brains and stale human urine to process soft, white leather, and much, much more. Auel is famous as a researcher, and she gleaned some of her survival lore firsthand on field trips into the wilds of her native Pacific Northwest, where she slept in an ice cave, hunted, made arrowheads, and learned to start a fire without matches. (The author—who had five children before she was 25, went from clerical work to earning an M.B.A., and wrote her first novel when she was over 40—is something of a superwoman herself.)
And yet despite all that's positive and riveting and informative about the books, I found them problematic. Like Scarlett O'Hara and the women in Ayn Rand's novels, Ayla is, alas, a great female character who comes with some cumbersome baggage.
First of all, Auel's research into the artifacts and the ecology of the Ice Age is so first-rate that it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the rest of the story—the human relationships—is speculative fiction. At the root of what's troublesome, I suspect, is Auel's decision to make the Others as much "like us" as possible, in everything from their speech patterns to their humor to their family lives. "These men aren't that much different from your sons or your college roommates," Auel told People. According to another interview in Publishers Weekly, "I tried to show that [Jondalar and his brother Thonolan] are thoroughly modern in their emotional responses, their intelligence, their psychological reactions. Anything we allow ourselves, we have to allow them." In fact, Jondalar and his brother sit around the cave talking what we would call thoroughly modern locker-room talk. ("Markeno is right," Carlono said. "Never take [the river] for granted. This river can find some unpleasant ways to remind you to pay attention to her" [Thonolan replies:] "I know some women like that, don't you, Jondalar?").
The margins of my books are marked with dozens of similar examples of modern sexual and domestic assumptions which, when transplanted wholesale into the Ice Age, take on the nature of eternal human verities. Although nobody knows how babies are made (and although the tribe as a whole is the key survival unit), most characters pair off Noah's Ark style and form nuclear families. (A boy whose mother is single "needs a man around"—although, in fact there are lots of men a few feet away at the next hearth.) In every tribe of the Others, women have one kind of name (say a name ending with an a) and men have another. Among Jondalar's people, even though girls and women are allowed to hunt if they wish, only boys become men after their first kill; girls become women after they lose their virginity. Among all the tribes, Jondalar explains to Ayla, people believe that if a man of the Others rapes a Clan woman it's "not approved, but overlooked. [But] for a woman to 'share pleasures' with a flathead male is unforgivable ... [an abomination]." (Sound familiar?)
My objection isn't necessarily that such things couldn't possibly have been true, but that there's no evidence that they were, and they often seem particularly illogical in the woman-centered cultures Auel has created. Thus, whenever Auel falls into sex-roles-as-usual, she's exercising a choice— and it's no more imaginative than the guys who put 1950s suburbanites in a cave and invented the Flintstones. Her Others really tell us more about ourselves than about Cro-Magnon people; indeed, Ayla is in many ways a projection of the 1980s' female ideal—a woman who brings home the bison and fries it.
The fact that the Others are so much "like us" also inform and complicates another problem—the books' subtle racism. I say "subtle" here to distinguish a different point from the more obvious Aryan blond superiority bias, although it should also be noted in fairness that a dark-skinned half-African Cro-Magnon character figures prominently in the newest book. (Unfortunately, he's cut off from African culture, having been adopted by the Others at an early age, and his blackness is merely something that looks nice next to white fox fur clothing—or Ayla's white skin.)
But more subtly, if Auel had made the Others less familiar we might have seen their conflicts with the Clan from a genuine historical perspective. As it is, although we know that the Others are wrong— that the members of the Clan aren't subhuman— the equation is rigged so that we automatically identify with the Others (who, we also know, are the ultimate evolutionary winners). The message that emerges is a kind of post-colonialist chauvinist liberalism: people "like us" can be secure enough in our historic destiny to tolerate "less evolved" cultures. In the new book, the character who is the only representative of the Clan is a sickly, doomed half-Clan child who reminds Ayla of the son she has lost and who needs her protection against discrimination. The character is sympathetic, but I think his sickliness is rigged. As a white North American I feel I'm already programmed to view "primitives" not as true equals, but as the inevitable "victims of progress." This character does not challenge such liberal smugness in any way.
I certainly wouldn't want Auel to provide us with Ice Age black militants or politically correct Cro-Magnon men who do exactly half the cave-work, but I do wish she'd allow us some ancestors who aren't like our college roommates, for better or worse. In fact, I thought Auel was at her best with the Clan and with other "exotic" characters whom she perhaps doesn't expect her average reader to "relate" to. In Horses we meet the Shamud, a Cro-Magnon healer and religious leader who is so androgynous that Jondalar honestly can't determine his/her gender. We later learn that people like the Shamud are always channeled into the tribe's priesthood, where they suffer a certain loneliness, but are compensated by respect and knowledge. "It is not easy to be different," the Shamud explains. "But it doesn't matter—the destiny is yours. There is no other place for one who carries the essence of both man and woman in one body." This isn't exactly the stuff of liberation, but what's wonderful and convincing about Shamud is that s/he doesn't resemble any gay man, lesbian, or transsexual you've ever met; s/he is instead a logical product of a particular culture, familiar enough to be human but magically alien in a way that the singlesbarsy heterosexual characters aren't.
Auel has promised three more novels in the series. I hope that in them she'll perhaps be able to balance our present-day need for strong female characters with the genuine mysteries and complexities of the past.
Source: Lindsay Van Gelder, "Speculative Fiction," in Ms., Vol. XIV, No. 9, March 1986, pp. 64, 70.
Female Heroism in the Ice Age: Jean Auel's Earth Children
By its very nature, speculative fiction has great potential to explore variations in patterns of human interaction. Jean M. Auel, in The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980) and its sequel The Valley of Horses, demonstrates how such fiction can delve into basic human problems. Set in the Ice Age near the Black Sea, the novels trace the growth and perseverance through adversity of its adolescent female protagonist. The author gives careful attention to detail and thus creates a believable portrait of the distant past. Nonetheless, the remote settings do not obscure the fact that the main character is a young woman, Ayla, caught in an essentially male-oriented world, striving for independence and self-respect. The novels question narrow definitions of masculinity and femininity to arrive at new answers which have implications for today's society.
Auel's main character represents a relatively new type of protagonist for the adventure story, the female hero. The main character of the adventure genre is traditionally male. John G. Cawelti contrasts this kind of formulaic literature with its masculine main characters to the romance which features female characters:
The central fantasy of the adventure story is that of the hero overcoming obstacles and dangers and accomplishing some important moral mission. . . . The feminine equivalent of the adventure story is the romance. . . . The crucial defining characteristic of romance is not that it stars a female but that its organizing action is the development of a love relationship. . . . Because this is the central line of development, the romance differs from the adventure story. Adventure stories, more often than not, contain a love interest, but one distinctly subsidiary to the hero's triumph over dangers and obstacles.
The woman protagonist in Auel's novels faces the challenge of the wilderness and survives, conforming to the pattern expected of the male hero in adventure tales. Love remains secondary to heroic action. Ayla is not a heroine of romance, but, rather, a true hero. In her study of heroines in English novels, Rachel M. Brownstein suggests that being a heroine necessitates a plot which ends in marriage:
The marriage plot most novels depend on is about finding validation of one's uniqueness and importance by being singled out among all other women by a man. The man's love is proof of the girl's value, and payment for it. Her search for perfect love through an incoherent, hostile wilderness of days is the plot that endows the aimless (life) with aim. Her quest is to be recognized in all her significance, to have her worth made real by being approved. When, at the end, this is done, she is transformed: her outward shape reflects her inner self, she is a bride, the very image of a heroine.
Ayla does not seek external validation by men but instead actively initiates the direction of the narrative without waiting for a man to take charge. She acts courageously without regard for her own safety. She not only protects children (an acceptable role for a woman), but in several instances she saves the lives of men. The creation of a female hero thus necessitates allowing the woman to assume the active, dominant role of rescuer expected in adventure fiction.
In addition to her heroic actions, Ayla possesses inherent skills which are generally associated with men. She is not passing through a "tomboy" stage, but has talents and inclinations of the opposite sex which create tension with the rest of the social order. Ayla is a Homo sapien adopted into a Neanderthal clan. The dexterity of her species makes her a natural hunter, an activity taboo to women of her adopted clan. Hunting is proscribed to women although it is actively encouraged for males as behavior extremely important to the survival of the group. The designation by the Neanderthals of certain behaviors as appropriate only to men runs contrary to Ayla's talents. Expression of her "masculine" nature and skill is repressed by society, resulting in a sense of personal alienation and eventually provoking rebellion. According to Auel's fictional account, Neanderthal women are expressly forbidden to touch weapons. Nonetheless, Ayla teaches herself to use a sling and even invents the technique of firing two rocks in rapid succession. The challenge of the hunt beckons irresistibly despite the fact that she can show no one her kill. While outwardly seeming to conduct herself as a passive female, she secretly violates the norm of the clan. Single-minded adherence to pursuing an activity unacceptable to her sex characterizes this protagonist, and the reader is expected to perceive her tenacity as a positive trait. While she conforms in public, she does not allow others to decide what she must do in private and eventually breaks out of the rigidly narrow sex role assigned to her.
The development of these masculine pursuits results in an increase not only in Ayla's physical strength but also in her self-esteem. When Ayla masters hunting with a sling, her whole demeanor changes without her realizing it: "She didn't know there was freedom in her step, an unconscious carryover from roaming the forests and fields: pride in her bearing, from learning a difficult skill and doing it better than someone else; and a growing self-confidence in her mien." The transformation sets her apart from members of her own sex and causes her to be described in masculine terms: "As her hunting skill grew, she developed an assurance and sinewy grace unknown to Clan women. She had the silent walk of the experienced hunter, a tight muscular control of her young body, a confidence in her own reflexes and a far-seeing look in her eye." This muscular tone and development is alien to the traditional romantic heroine who never needs a muscle of her own. It is possible to see in Ayla's athletic body the new feminine ideal of the 1980s with its emphasis on participation in sports and even bodybuilding.
Male characters in the clan perceive this "masculine" female as a threat and react savagely. Auel explains how tradition calls for Neanderthal women to accept the sexual advances of any adult male of the group. Broud, a sadistic Neanderthal man who delights in repeatedly raping Ayla in the most brutal manner, embodies the resentments of the men. Dominance over the young woman forms an essential ingredient in their relationship: "Broud reveled in his newfound dominance over Ayla and used her often.... After a time, it was no longer painful, but Ayla detested it. And it was her hatred that Broud enjoyed. He had put her in her place, gained superiority over her, and finally found a way to make her react to him. It didn't matter that her response was negative, he preferred it. He wanted to see her cower, to see her fear, to see her force herself to submit". The anger directed by men toward her does not result in eliminating the offensive masculine inclinations or talents. Rather, it actually brings about the opposite effect, and instead of being broken into submission and passivity, Ayla is strengthened by this cruel treatment and becomes even more masculine. She undergoes stages in the life of the typical male hero, including an initiation trial similar to a male puberty rite. When Ayla uses a sling in front of clan members to save a child from a predator, she reacts instinctively without regard for possible consequences to her. The wise clan leader resolves the dilemma of an appropriate punishment for her heroic but unpardonable behavior by reducing the customary sentence to a month-long "death curse." She survives this test despite a harrowing experience in a blizzard. As a result, the clan accepts her into the ranks of hunters and her totem is symbolically marked on her thigh as would be the case with a young man at puberty. After the ceremony, the clan celebrates with the customary feast. Lest she forget her proper place, the men of the clan are careful to point out that hunting is the only male prerogative which Ayla may pursue. The leader states: "Ayla, you have made your first kill; you must now assume the responsibilities of an adult. But you are a woman, not a man, and you will be a woman always, in all ways but one. You may use only a sling, Ayla, but you are now the Woman Who Hunts". Through her courageous persistence, she earns the right to assume a male persona and enjoys increased opportunities.
The ending of The Clan of the Cave Bear clearly delineates Ayla's "masculine" courage and defiance as contrasted with Broud's "feminine" impulsiveness. His leadership ability and judgment are questioned. One of Broud's first acts as leader is to banish Ayla forever with a permanent "death curse," but instead of ignoring her after the curse is performed, he raises his fist in fury to her, an act of acknowledgment. Even his father realizes Broud's lack of character and gives the ultimate insult, that Ayla is more of a man than Broud is: "You still don't understand, do you? You acknowledged her, Broud, she has beaten you. She's dead, and still she won. She was a woman, and she had more courage than you, Broud, more determination, more self-control. She was more man than you are. Ayla should have been the son of my mate." There could be no harsher reproach in a society with such rigid sex-role expectations than for a man to be unfavorably compared to a woman.
The social organization of the clan fails to provide flexibility for exceptional members. Neanderthal groups, according to Auel's narrative, function because of proscribed roles maintained through racial memory. Despite inherent differences in the species, Ayla adjusts to clan life and lives happily as long as the clan has a tolerant leader. Her very nature as a Homo sapien arouses intense hatred in Broud and, when he finally receives power in the closing pages of the novel, she is unjustly expelled from the group. Ayla wanders northward alone, seeking others of her kind. The Clan of the Cave Bear ends with her being cursed and forced to leave the clan. The sequel begins with her arduous and lonely search for a new life. The plot thus advances from conflicts within society to survival alone in a hostile wilderness. Ayla's great physical stamina, her tenacity, and her basic intelligence make her story credible and her survival possible.
In The Valley of Horses Ayla's relationships with animals prove more satisfying than with people. She lives happily for four years with a mare and a cave lion which she raises from orphans and tames to the point where they accompany her on the hunt and allow her to ride them. This relationship between the protagonist and a horse has an erotic edge. Although she is not ignorant of the basic mechanics of sexuality, she has never felt profound yearnings. The rut of Ayla's mare provokes strange feelings in the woman which she does not understand, since sexuality among the Neanderthals is limited to the male's "relieving his needs" with the female. Ayla is distressed when her mare follows her sexual urges and freely joins a wild stallion, but since the horse, like the cave lion, is not her possession, she realizes that the mare is free to depart at will to join her own kind. In fact, Ayla envies the horse's good fortune. While the animals do not remain constantly with the young woman, they prove good companions in an otherwise lonely environment.
Whereas Ayla has certain characteristics of a male hero, she remains profoundly female. For instance, her great strength does not change her basic biological makeup. Monthly cycles still occur, and leather straps fulfill sanitary needs during menstruation. Ayla excels in traditional feminine handiwork, spending her spare time making exquisite baskets and learning how to sew. She clearly sees herself as the female in potential sexual situations with men. This heterosexual orientation remains constant throughout the novel regardless of her experiences with male brutality. She wants to find a mate/husband and raise children, but the difference between her and the typical romantic heroine is that Ayla simultaneously can accept both masculine and feminine aspects of her androgynous being. The fact that she can become a mother, for instance, does not preclude her from riding horses or hunting.
Ayla's isolation is a necessary step in allowing her to develop a more balanced sense of herself which eventually leads to her successful reintegration into a less repressive society. The changes in attitudes and experiences brought about by her separation from the group in which she was raised produce a new outlook for Ayla. The injustice she suffered as a sex object does not, however, cause her to reject all men. Indeed, the novels are bildungsromans exploring Ayla's nascent sexuality and her search for a meaningful relationship with a sympathetic man. She does not become sexually awakened until finding a compatible human partner in The Valley of Horses. She finally encounters a man who takes for granted that women hunt and make tools and that men help with food gathering and preserving. Mutual respect and admiration sparks affection between the two characters. The novel ends with the meeting of a human group, a signal of Ayla's entry into a new social order. She manages to have it all— independence and companionship—the fantasy of the modern American woman.
While Auel creates in these novels an active and heroic female figure grappling with tensions between her basic nature and her society, she also presents the difficulties males have adjusting socially. The Valley of Horses introduces a male protagonist, Jondalar, whose story is followed in chapters alternating with Ayla's adventures until the two finally meet and Ayla saves his life. Naturally, they fall in love. One might even say that the man's tale is the romance, since following Cawelti's definition, his preoccupation is with finding the ideal woman whereas Ayla struggles to survive and passes tests of bravery typical of the adventure story. Jondalar accompanies his brother on a journey. He would have preferred to stay at home. He serves as a companion rather than initiating action on his own as does Ayla. While he is proficient in the act of love, he does not know how to risk loving until he finds Ayla. One woman who loves him points out that he may be destined for an especially strong woman: "Maybe you haven't found the right woman. Maybe the Mother has someone special for you. She doesn't make many like you. You are really more than most women could bear. If all your love were concentrated on one, it could overwhelm her, if she wasn't one to whom the Mother gave equal gifts. Even if you did love me I'm not sure I could live with it. If you loved a woman as much as you love your brother, she would have to be very strong." In the Ice Age world Auel creates, neither men nor women are exempt from difficulties. The author rejects the idea of dominance by either of the sexes in favor of freedom of all people.
These popular novels reflect the author's optimism regarding the resolution of the difficult problems of individual choice which plague contemporary society. Just as Ayla is isolated, present day women all too often find themselves with no role models and no positive support from society as they attempt to function in today's world. While the situation of the Ice Age is different from our own, the solutions worked out in speculative fiction mirror those that must be worked out in lives of twentieth-century women. The success of these two books as popular fiction stems from the appeal of the strength of the female hero and the positive ending to her story.
The difficulty of integrating personal and professional life can be especially challenging in a complex society. William S. Barnbridge suggests a possible effect on present society of Sword-and-Sorcery novels which applies just as well to other novels of speculative fiction such as Auel's: "While Sword-and-Sorcery imagines fantastic worlds, the analysis of alternate ascribed roles and family structures it offers may contribute indirectly to create innovation in our own society." Speculative fiction leads the way for new patterns of human interaction. In this manner, literature posits and tests creative approaches to human dilemmas, working out theoretical cases to be either accepted or rejected by the evolving social order.
Source: Diane S. Wood, "Female Heroism in the Ice Age: Jean Auel's Earth Children," in Extrapolation, Vol. 27, No. 1, Spring 1986, pp. 33-38.