SOURCE: Spivack, Charlotte. “Fantasy and the Feminine.” In Merlin's Daughters: Contemporary Women Writers of Fantasy, pp. 3-16. New York, N.Y.: Greenwood Press, 1987.

[In the following essay, Spivack provides a brief overview of fantasy literature and theory, focusing on ways in which women writers have modified the fantasy genre to demonstrate self-fulfillment and the preservation of community.]

In spite of the pervasive critical ambivalence toward individual works of fantasy, the theory of fantasy literature has attracted much critical attention in recent years. Pioneering attempts to define the nature of “the fantastic” were Harvey Cox's The Feast of Fools (1969), which stressed the element of festive release in the impulse to fantasy, and Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1970, tr. 1973), which narrowly perceived fantasy as a moment of hesitation experienced in the presence of an apparently supernatural event.¹ More recently, W. R. Irwin and Eric Rabkin have also dealt with fantasy theory, stressing respectively “the impossible” (The Game of the Impossible: A Rhetoric of Fantasy [1976]) and the reversal of the ground rules of narrative (The Fantastic in Literature [1976]).² All of these studies are essentially concerned with “the fantastic” as an element in much of the world's literature rather than with a specific kind of literature that is popularly recognized as “fantasy.” Colin Manlove rightly noted that most definitions of fantasy are either too broad or too narrow, “too inclusive to be definite or too definite to include very much.”³ In Manlove's own attempt to delimit fantasy he defines it as “a fiction evoking wonder and containing a substantive and irreducible element of supernatural or impossible worlds.”⁴ I have argued elsewhere that the word “fantasy” is so diversely and diffusely used as to preclude definition, suggesting that a strictly literary genre or subgenre might usefully (and on solid historical and etymological grounds) be distinguished as “phantasy.”⁵ My own emphasis is on the psychological dimension of fantasy fiction, consonant with Ursula K. Le Guin's observation that fantasy deals with the journey to self-knowledge, speaking “to the unconscious, from the unconscious, in the language of the unconscious, symbol and archetype.”⁶

For this reason I must reject the notion of “the impossible” as a logical starting point for dealing with fantasy. To define fantasy in terms of the impossible is to define possibility in terms of scientific realism. The events in fantasy fiction may be physically impossible, but they are not psychologically impossible. Like the content of dreams, they have psychic validity. Contrast with realism may indeed be a helpful approach to fantasy but not based on the expectations of realism, i.e., whether a given event can or cannot happen in the physical world. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde may be a fantasy, but schizophrenia is a real phenomenon.

A better starting point is the recognition of the symbolic nature of fantasy as opposed to the representational nature of realism. Plato long ago distinguished between art produced by fantasy (a mental faculty) as symbolic and art produced by the imagination (a different mental faculty) as representative of images existing in the real world.⁷ In contemporary critical terminology, realistic fiction is essentially metonomy, the part signifying the whole. The story of a child growing up in a New York ghetto, for example, is paradigmatic of the lives of all urban minority children. Fantasy fiction, on the other hand, is essentially metaphor, based on implied resemblance between two basically unlike things. The fantasy quest for a magic talisman, for example, does not imply a whole of which it is a part, but rather it constitutes a totally symbolic action. The quest for an object symbolizes a quest for meaning on the nonmaterial level of experience. Similarly, magic as means to fulfill the quest serves as a symbolic action. The transformation of a person into a dragon is not paradigmatic of whole populations in the process of literal change to reptilian form. Instead, it functions as metaphor, indicating that a person who behaves monstrously is inwardly dragonish.

The two most central and significant symbols in most contemporary fantasy, through which both narrative form and thematic content are articulated, are the quest and magic. As Jane Mobley perceptively notes, “Magic is the informing principle in fantasy.”⁸ The quest—not surprising—implies a question. Just as the detective novel asks “Whodunit,” so the fantasy novel asks “What do I seek?” The former question is directed outward, the latter inward. The mode by which the detective novel answers its outward question is rational deduction from given evidence. The mode by which the fantasy quest is identified inwardly and fulfilled is magic. Whereas the conundrum of the mystery novel is literal, the quest in the fantasy novel is symbolic. It is a metaphor of the search for meaning, for identity.

Magic must also be viewed as metaphorical rather than literal. Mobley precisely defines magic as “a creative power capable of actualizing itself in form.”⁹ This actualization is transformational: Magic changes the appearance of things. Magic in fantasy functions as both impersonal force at work in the world and as personal directed use of power by a gifted individual. As Peter Beagle's bumbling magician Schmendrick (The Last Unicorn) puts it, everything is crouching in readiness to become something else. Magic as an elemental force in nature brings about changes: the cocoon turns into a butterfly. Magic in the individual is creativity. As Le Guin observes, “Wizardry is artistry.”¹⁰ The creative power of the imagination transforms reality by actualizing itself in form: notes into music, the alphabet into poetry, the child into a hero. In fantasy, then, magic serves as a metaphor of the creative power of the imagination. The fantasy fiction under consideration in this book may thus be perceived as an “enchanted quest,” an inner journey informed by magic.

This kind of fantasy is a modern, i.e., postmedieval genre. The Middle Ages did not develop fantasy as a separate form since the medieval mind perceived the world “with an all-inclusive awareness of simultaneous realities.”¹¹ The medieval romance, the ancestor of fantasy, combined the mundane and the magical, the picaresque and the numinous, the physical and the supernatural. To an age that lovingly and repeatedly depicted the ascent of the Virgin to heaven, a flying dragon posed no problem in credibility. For the Middle Ages, however, the dynamic of magic was sacred. God the ultimate wizard was the source of all creative transformation that occurred vertically, down from and upward toward the divine. The secular movement of the Renaissance opened the possibility through science of horizontal transformation, in effect bringing about both fantasy and science fiction. Like Lord Dunsany's Elfland drifting away from the fields we know, the newly divided psyche of Western culture split off conscious from unconscious, rational from irrational, spirit from matter.¹² Magic, no longer permeating the primary world, retreated to the secondary world of the imagination. In literature this split led to science fiction as the extrapolation of the rational and to fantasy as the extrapolation of the nonrational. Early science fiction experimented with voyages to the moon, while fantasy delved into the dark forest of the unconscious, home of the vampire and dragon. From a materialist perspective one might call the science-fiction speculation realistic—people have traveled to the moon—but although the vampire and dragon are not materially real, they are real elements in the psyche and as such are symbolic of human problems, projections, dreams, and nightmares.

The earliest fantasy in English, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, offers a symbolic quest narrative in an imagined or secondary world where magic is operative. Each of its six books features a knight's quest for perfection in a given virtue, with the entire work, which was never finished, aimed at representing the total person perfect in all the moral virtues. (What do I seek? Moral perfection.) The dynamic of transformation is magic, but The Faerie Queene is a transcendental fantasy, with magic both vertical and horizontal, a product of intervention by supernatural powers as well as by wizards. A moral allegory as well as a fantasy, The Faerie Queene seeks to change the individual but otherwise functions conservatively to confirm the established value of its religious and political milieu. It is not, as many later fantasies were to be, subversive.

Fantasy over the next two centuries following Spenser will not concern us here, for in its escape from mimetic realism English popular literature for the most part diverged either into hyperrational science fiction or antirational Gothic. Horror fiction proliferated in the eighteenth century, with chilling tales of ghosts and monsters, haunted castles and decayed ruins, asserting a need for sexual and instinctual freedom through voicing the repressed and ghoulish underside of a society totally dedicated to rationality. Rosemary Jackson has demonstrated the connection between Gothic fantasy and cultural taboo in her study of fantasy as subversion from a psychoanalytical perspective.¹³

It is not until the nineteenth century that we see a resurgence in England of the Spenserian secondary-world model of fantasy fiction. William Morris, an ardent medievalist and social reformer, wrote several long fantasy novels structured as quests and moved by magic. Also in the nineteenth century a new religious focus was introduced into fantasy by George MacDonald, a devout Scottish minister. MacDonald's adult works Lilith and Phantastes (named for a character in Spenser) are transcendental fantasies positing a specifically Christian quest for rebirth.

Several fantasists in the twentieth century have continued the tradition of the transcendental mode, the most important being the Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Williams's fantasies are overtly theological, set in the primary world which is spiritually invaded by supernatural forces. In one novel the Holy Grail reappears in rural England; in another the two protagonists are dead, returning to London to fulfill a spiritual mission. Lewis's Narnia stories for children and space trilogy for adults are symbolically Christian. Neither Aslan the Narnian lion nor Ransome the new Pendragon is Christ but both are metaphors of the self-sacrificial redeemer. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is neither theological nor overtly Christian, but the morality of his Middle Earth is clearly symbolic of Christian dualism, with evil represented in terms of darkness and his wizard Gandalf reborn and garbed in white after his return from the dead. All three are transcendental fantasists with immortality as one goal of the quest and with magic emanating from above through supernatural intervention.

Several modern fantasists, including the Inklings, have also turned to the Arthurian mythos for the material of the fantasy quest. For most of these writers the Arthurian realm, although ostensibly medieval and European, is symbolically a secondary world not based on historical accuracy. One well-known example is T. H. White who in the opening volume of his four-novel series deliberately uses anachronisms to alienate his setting from realistic reader expectations, although he also incorporates authentic detail concerning medieval life on such matters as falconry and castle architecture. Since White's The Once and Future King Arthurian fantasy has proliferated so as to become a veritable subgenre.¹⁴ Five of the ten authors I discuss have written Arthurian fantasy.

Many fantasy writers have created wholly original secondary worlds. Of these the most phenomenally successful is J. R. R. Tolkien whose trilogy achieved a remarkable readership especially in this country in the 1960s. Much more than a mere best seller, The Lord of the Rings was a spiritual construct for our materialistic time, a powerfully evocative symbol of what seemed to be wrong and what should be done about it. For the younger generation who read it twenty times, who memorized genealogies and learned to write Elvish, it had the force of a sacred text. Tolkien is significant for introducing a new element into fantasy fiction, i.e., political subversion.¹⁵ Tolkien converted the quest to find something into a quest to destroy something. As metaphor Frodo's quest to destroy the ring of power signaled a protest against the establishment: antiwar, antitechnology, antipower politics. Those rational adults who viewed the Middle Earth mania as mere adolescent escapism missed the point of this devastatingly imaginative critique of our society. It is no coincidence that its popularity peaked during the Vietnam era. Since the force of its protest was symbolic rather than literal, its message was lost to the “realists.” Frodo is still not recognized for the significant twentieth-century hero that he is. This self-effacing hobbit undermines two major mythic role models of Western patriarchal society, Faust and Prometheus. Frodo is an anti-Faust, committed to destroying power, not in its manifestations but at its source, and an anti-Prometheus, distrustful of the potentially destructive uses of that stolen fire of technology. In this sense, although Tolkien's trilogy is notoriously lacking in female characters, the work exhibits decidedly “feminine” themes.

Fantasy has flourished since Tolkien. At the moment it is burgeoning, with several new writers exemplifying the literary potential inherent in the genre. At this point I must return to my given subject, women fantasists. I must address the question of whether there is a distinctively feminine—or even feminist—fantasy or whether the top women writers of fantasy simply prove their ability to write superior versions of the traditional genre. I should also ask whether the genre itself is perhaps “feminine” as opposed to, at the extreme, hard-core “masculine” science fiction. I have already suggested that the women writers discussed here have indeed modified the genre in significant ways, as they have also influenced and changed science fiction. To varying degrees the work of these ten writers does represent a feminine revisioning of the fantasy quest and its heroes, the fantasy world and its occupants, and, above all, the meaning of magic at the heart of fantasy. This is not to say that all of these writers are feminists, nor is it to suggest that all of them are consciously committed to rejecting the models of past fantasy masterpieces. To a substantial degree, however, a feminine perspective on plot, character, theme, structure, and imagery is pervasive in the novels of these writers. Furthermore, as I hope to demonstrate, these writers are, unlike Spenser and rather more like Tolkien, only much more so, ultimately and profoundly subversive.

First let us look at the most obvious ways in which fantasy by female writers is different. The most immediately evident distinction is the choice of female protagonists. Andre Norton's Witch World series is about women; the trilogies of Ursula K. Le Guin and Patricia McKillip feature both female and male protagonists; Evangeline Walton, Vera Chapman, and Marion Zimmer Bradley all focus on female protagonists. Even more important than the mere choice of women as leading characters, however, is the concept of hero that underlies the choice. In much sword and sorcery written by women, for example, female heroes play conventional male roles as warriors. Their emphasis is on physical strength, courage, and aggressive behavior. In the fantasy novels the female protagonists also demonstrate physical courage and resourcefulness, but they are not committed to male goals. Whether warriors or wizards, and there are both, their aim is not power or domination, but rather self-fulfillment and protection of the community.

Furthermore, just as major women characters are often both masculine and feminine in their abilities, both expert with swords and devoted to peace, so male characters are also complex, with their aggressive natures modified by sensitivity. At the same time, those traditionally male traits of pride, sexual prowess, and desire for domination are often subjected to negative scrutiny. In short, the traditional roles of both men and women are reevaluated and recreated in these works. Probably the best examples of the modified male are found in the fantasies of Mary Stewart and Katharine Kurtz, which at first appear simply masculine in approach. Stewart's trilogy is devoted to the life of Merlin, the archetypal male wizard, but his intuitiveness, his sensitivity to nature, his minimizing of power, all seem feminine, permitting him in effect to function as the feminine side of his king. Kurtz's heroes in her two trilogies play traditional male roles, as warriors, priests, and politicians, but their conduct is by no means traditional. In her pseudomedieval fantasy world the male heroes exhibit traits usually associated with and often repressed as feminine.

Another overtly feminist strategy in these novels is the assumption of a female point of view on conventionally masculine subjects. Several women writers have turned to the Arthurian legend, which they have not dealt with in conventional ways. Instead, they offer a feminine perspective on the legendary events. Vera Chapman, for example, in her Arthurian trilogy, creates a new character to narrate part of the old story—King Arthur's daughter—and endows minor characters with strong personalities to narrate the rest—Bertilak's wife and Lynette. Both Marion Zimmer Bradley and Gillian Bradshaw retell events from the point of view of major female characters. Bradshaw makes Gwynhwyfar a first-person narrative voice, thereby reconceiving the role of the much maligned queen as a sympathetic woman. Bradley focuses on Morgan le Fay, recreating her role as a complex and positive character, far removed from the villainous part she plays in the original. Through these women narrators the events also shift in importance, with battles and politics losing emphasis in favor of human relationships and reactions.

A further narrative device favored by women fantasy writers is the circular as opposed to the linear plot.¹⁶ As Le Guin succinctly states it in her Earthsea trilogy, “To go is to return.”¹⁷ Both Le Guin and Patricia McKillip in their trilogies put an emphasis on the second half of the traditional quest, the return, culminating in rebirth. The paradigm of the mythic hero, followed at least in part by most fantasists, includes eight stages from miraculous birth and inspired childhood through a period of meditation, the undertaking of a quest, a literal or symbolic death, journey to the underworld, and ultimately rebirth and apotheosis. Most, however, concentrate on the first half, with emphasis on the climactic nature of the quest. This heroic outward movement, responding to the call to adventure, is aimed at establishing the ego, as Joseph Campbell and others have pointed out, but the total self is not achieved until after the symbolic death, descent, and rebirth, followed by a return to the starting place. Le Guin's and McKillip's heroes return to their place of birth, as does Mary Stewart's Merlin, whose final enchanted sleep takes place in the very cave wherein he was conceived.¹⁸

Another recurring feature in fantasy by women writers is the return to the matriarchal society of the ancient Celtic world. The traditional late medieval setting, with the panoply of chivalric knighthood, is rejected in favor of the very early or premedieval, before the worship of the goddess has given way to Christianity. The Grail as motif is thus often replaced by the sacred cauldron. Evangeline Walton's translation and adaptation of the Welsh epic The Mabinogion is a convincing depiction of life in ancient Dyved where the mother goddess was worshipped. Bradley also chooses a Celtic setting, with a plot stressing the conflict between the established matriarchy and the threatening new patriarchy introduced by Christianity. Andre Norton, on the other hand, creates her own original matriarchal society in her futuristic Witch World.

All of these techniques are clearly and readily apparent as feminist in focus: the emphasis on female protagonists, the preference for a matriarchal society as setting, the use of a circular rather than linear plot structure, and the assumption of a feminine point of view on subject matter traditionally presented from a male perspective. What more deeply distinguishes these fantasies by women writers is something much less obvious but ultimately much more significant. These works, which employ the fantasy quest as metaphor for the search for meaning through magic as metaphor for the transforming power of the creative imagination, are subtly but forcefully subversive of certain key concepts in the mainstream traditions of Western civilization. Much more than Tolkien, whose hobbits quietly prodded American youth into opposing the war in Vietnam, these fantasies are quietly undermining the foundations of capitalism, power politics, and Christian dualism. As Michael Butor points out in his study of the fairy tale, “[f]airyland is a criticism of ossified reality. It does not remain side by side with the latter; it reacts upon it; it suggests that we transform it, that we reinstate what is out of place.”¹⁹ Similarly, in the secondary worlds of fantasy the wizard's spell and the dragon's flame are metaphorically endeavoring to transform society in the direction of feminist values.

The first of these subversive motifs is the renunciation of the power principle in politics. As we have seen, Tolkien also introduces this theme but in a much more limited way. Frodo undertakes a quest to destroy the ring of power because the ring has been forged by a quintessentially evil figure. Power is the legitimate aim of other major figures representing the good. The aims of power-seeking are fulfilled in several ways that are positive in context: the dragon is slain, the war is fought and won, the king is restored to the throne. These goals are regarded as good ones. In contrast, in many of the fantasies written by women, the desire for power is denounced as a principle. It is not a matter of the good guys exerting power in order to crush the power-seeking of the bad guys. Instead, power-seeking as such is rejected. The goal in these quests is to not slay the dragon, to not take the treasure, to not seize the throne, to not dominate the Other.

In Andre Norton's Witch World, for example, the group of characters with potentially the greatest power is the Council of Witches. These gifted women have innate spiritual strength that enables them to perform magic. They use their skills in magic, however, only to negate or avert aggressive actions on the part of their power-hungry neighbors. The psychic power of these witches is superior to the steel weapons used by men. These wise women are committed to protecting their own free society and to maintaining the balance in nature. They use their magic to avert the threat of rape, war, and other forms of male domination, but when the threat is dispelled they do not establish their own political system. They retire to their own inner spiritual development. Their major antagonist is a technologically advanced society that they are forced to repel for the sake of remaining free. In so doing they do not adopt the technology that they see as a potentially dangerous base of tyrannical power.

Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy traces the career of a wizard from boyhood through maturity when he becomes an archmage. The major lesson he learns from his training is not to use the magical powers he possesses. Eager to perform impressive deeds of magic, he violates the stricture with disastrous consequences to himself and others. Through the course of the trilogy he gains maturity as he becomes able to manifest his wizardry through renouncing its usage except when absolutely necessary. He does not even kill the dragon but rather negotiates with it for future peaceful coexistence. The highest aim of wizardry is being, not doing.

The hero of McKillip's trilogy, Riddle of the Stars, is also faced with the challenge of accepting power, but he wishes to reject it from the start. The thoughtful, introspective type, he is part farmer, part student. His dearest wish is to marry his fiancée and settle down on his farm, spending his leisure in solving riddles, his favorite intellectual occupation. When he learns that it is his destiny to play an important role in the fate of the world, he desperately resists. Although the need to assume power is thrust upon him by the pressure of events, he never surrenders his desire for a quiet life of hard work and contemplation, without political involvement. He is by temperament what Le Guin's hero strives to become.

In her Arthurian trilogy, Gillian Bradshaw depicts the thrust for both military and political power as destructive of nature. More heroic than either the warriors or the leaders are the women who give birth, who heal, who suffer to maintain their families and households in the violent context of war and strife. Power comes and goes, passing through bloodstained hands, but the distaff world provides continuity through nurture. To the young mother whose husband is killed in battle the cause of empire is ill-conceived and meaningless. Even the death of King Arthur is shown to be the senseless result of a vain power struggle. What finally establishes Gawain as a member of the inner Arthurian circle is not his battle prowess, which he has demonstrated repeatedly to the point of madness, but rather his kindness to a fatally wounded soldier. Easing the pain of a dying man without any hope of reward or recognition is the highest kind of heroism.

In feminist fantasy, then, power for the sake of power is denounced in favor of living and letting live. The code of the warrior and the ruler is deglorified and exposed as negative and destructive, while the role of the wizard is exalted for its perceptive passivity.

A second subversive theme in fantasies by women writers is the vindication of mortality. Contrary to accepted tradition, immortality, whether assumed as a literal afterlife or sought as a lasting fame in this life, is not aspired to. As Le Guin's hero explains, “Death is the price we pay for our life” (FS, p. 180). Her trilogy offers a vehement protest against a misguided desire for immortality. The concluding novel concerns the need to free Earthsea from the malignant influence of a sorcerer who has opened the gate between life and death in order to gain immortality for himself and, with it, power over others. All of the light, the color, and the joy have left the world since movement between life and death has become possible. Magic no longer works, for the loss of distinction has killed the imagination. The living exist in a shadowy way, resembling the world of the dead, the Dry Land, for without death, life has no meaning.

Susan Cooper's novels also incorporate the theme of rejecting immortality. She focuses on individual choice, presenting one character who opts for immortal life and one who refuses it. The unfortunate man who takes on the burden of immortality illustrates the dire consequences of everlasting life. He is a wanderer who has survived for centuries and longs to be freed from his endless existence. For him death will be a relief. The other character is a young man who discovers his identity as the son of King Arthur. Transposed to the modern age, he must choose between joining his legendary father in immortality or staying on the farm in Wales where he has been brought up by the rural couple whom he had thought were his parents. For him the immediate loving bonds of family are more important than the immortal role as Pendragon.

Evangeline Walton's handling of the same theme in her fantasy based on the Mabinogion shifts attention from the desire for immortality to the vindication of mortality. In the ancient Celtic world depicted in these works, desire for immortality on the part of an individual seems egoistically defiant of nature, for in the natural scheme of life all are reborn into higher levels of being. Death is therefore but a gateway to rebirth on a higher plane. The newly introduced Christian idea of eternal reward or punishment conflicts with belief in the goddess who claims both Time and Death as her children, and from whose womb will come rebirth as well as birth. The notion of an eternal afterlife imposes a moral structure on an inevitable natural process that is inherently evolutionary.

In dealing with Arthurian themes, both Bradshaw and Stewart stress acceptance of mortality in the context of the renewal of nature. Bradshaw's Gwynhwyfar will not accept the tale that Arthur will come again, preferring the consolation of spring, when life is naturally reborn. Stewart's Merlin retires to his cave, but not for an eternity.

A third subversive theme is the depolarization of values. Nothing has been more central to fiction in the Western world than the depiction of conflict between right and wrong, hero and villain. The clarity and vehemence of the conflict have pervaded popular literature in particular, because of its generally diminished regard for moral and aesthetic ambiguity. But even allowing for the greater ambiguity inherent in major fiction, the lines of force are even there clearly drawn: Raskolnikov was wrong to murder the pawnbroker; Scrooge should not have fired Bob Cratchett; Huck Finn was right to defend Jim, even at peril to his own soul. In the case of the women fantasy writers, however, these lines dissolve. One major example is the fiction of Le Guin, which is informed by Taoism in its moral structure. Unlike Christianity, Taoism rejects the polarization of opposites. Living well according to Taoism means living in harmony with nature, thereby maintaining a balance between natural opposites. In Earthsea good and evil do not exist as moral constructs, and light and dark are of equal value. Of the many elements held in binary suspension none is more basic than life and death, each of which requires the other.

In Norton's Witch World series, earthly standards of good and evil and moral judgments about reward and punishment become totally extrinsic and irrelevant on other planets. The hero of the first work is an army deserter in this world, but his humane sensitivity helps him become a savior in another. In McKillip's riddling world good and evil do not exist as concepts. By implication identity (more precisely, the search for identity) is valorized through the premium set on the ability to answer riddles, but truth remains the elusive ultimate riddle. In her narrative such modes of behavior as shape-changing function creatively or destructively, resisting ethical categorization. Furthermore, the omnipresent figure of Deth the harpist is both lauded and condemned, both accepted and rejected, emerging as a strong and essential presence but beyond moral judgment.

In the Arthurian and Celtic fantasies the depolarization of values is most evident in connection with sexuality. In the works of both Walton and Bradley sexuality is regarded as natural and blameless. In the absence of concepts of marriage, paternity, and legitimacy, the sexual act is free and fertility welcome. Sexual union is regarded as initiatory rather than possessive. Even incest is not prohibited, and Arthur's sense of guilt over the incestuous birth of Mordred is seen as a product of arbitrary Christian legalism.

In Bradshaw's Arthurian trilogy valorization is treated as a theme in itself. Her characters are concerned with the contrary forces of Dark and Light but find these opposites coexisting in every human being. Several who are devoted to serving the Light find themselves caught up in destructive behavior patterns that aid the Dark. Well-meaning characters perform actions that have negative consequences, but not out of malice or turpitude. Since things go both right and wrong in this world, moral blame is often essentially irrelevant. To condemn Gwynhwyfar's adultery as morally evil, then, is to misinterpret the act and misrepresent human reality.

The depolarization of values in feminist fantasy involves more than the rejection of moral dualism. One of the most profound and fundamental polarities is that of Self and Other. Much of human history has been characterized by political and religious intolerance of the Other. And in much literature male authors have posited the female as Other. Contrary to the long-established literary tradition of subduing or eliminating the Other as undesirable alien (or even of forcefully converting this alien presence, as in the case of Shylock), several women writers of fantasy direct their narratives toward acceptance of the Other, not merely dealienating it (and themselves) but actually integrating Self and Other.

Katharine Kurtz's double trilogy offers a striking illustration of this attitude. She is concerned with a gifted alien race, who are for centuries rejected as Other and mistreated for their giftedness. In these novels the perspective on discrimination is heightened through the fact that the difference—the Otherness—is one of superiority, not supposed inferiority. Fear motivates the prejudice of the establishment in the absence of any antisocial behavior on the part of those discriminated against. Andre Norton's novels concentrate on the integration of Otherness. In her elaborately imaginative other worlds, rational races exist in a multitude of forms. Wisdom of the scientific, philosophical, and mystical varieties exists in serpentine, winged, furred, and scaled as well as two-legged species. Similarly in McKillip's world, although the races are all human, the deeply engrained provincialism of the peoples from differing areas is unsullied by the aggressiveness of zenophobia. Otherness is an uncontested fact of life, a feature lending variety, amusement, and endless conversational possibilities.

Also implicit in depolarization is the rejection of transcendence in favor of immanence, a feature that sharply differentiates the fantasy worlds of the women writers from those of the Christian school, including the Inklings. One of the most elegantly detailed and pervasively immanent worlds is Le Guin's Earthsea. Although there is reference to a creator, clearly all is immanent within the creation. The highest wisdom available to the wizard is knowledge of the true names of things. These names are not imposed but derived, as the wizard finds Logos a process not unrelated to his own becoming. McKillip's world in its sly and subtle way is also an attack on transcendence. Much of her trilogy concerns the search for the so-called High One, who may or may not exist. Transcendence has been inherited in this world as an hypothesis but not wholly believed in and vulnerable to disproof. Here, as in Earthsea, understanding a thing is based on knowing its name, but here it is carried further to the point of transformation. Knowing about trees enables one ultimately to become a tree. Needless to say, tapping that deep-down sense of identity with trees in oneself is not easy.

Inherent in the theme of immanence is the stress on the importance of the natural environment. These fantasies are ecology-minded, often with an attendant bias against technology which is usually regarded as exploitative. Earthsea is totally without modern technology, and the heart of the ethical dictum is maintaining the balance in nature. In the Witch World, the enemies of nature as well as of human peace are the technological societies. In Walton's series the earth is worshipped as a manifestation of the mother goddess. To neglect the needs of the earth or to endanger its fruitfulness is to strike at the heart of life, all life. In Bradley's Celtic world the sacred places are those in nature. Worship must take place out of doors, not in a building, which is a human structure. Trees and waters are sacred. One social dimension of this attitude toward fecund nature is sexual permissiveness. Cutting down trees and prohibiting sex are both violations of nature.

In the fantasy fiction of contemporary women writers, then, certain patriarchal systems prevalent in our time are quietly being questioned, subverted, and revisioned. Far from being cute stories about unicorns written for juveniles, these mature, thought-provoking novels represent an intellectual and imaginative rebellion against the status quo. Through their prevailing metaphor of magic, they seek to transform society through the creative power of the imagination. The quest is a fantasy metaphor, but the transformation is a real goal. As Terry Eagleton points out, it “is not just that women should have equality of power and status with men; it is a questioning of all such power and status. It is not that the world will be better off with more female participation in it; it is that without the ‘feminization’ of human history, the world is unlikely to survive.”²⁰

Notes

1. Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969; New York: Harper and Row, 1970); Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard (Cleveland, Ohio: Case Western Reserve University, 1973).

2. W. R. Irwin, The Game of the Impossible: The Rhetoric of Fantasy (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1976); Eric Rabkin, The Fantastic in Literature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976).

3. Colin Manlove, “On the Nature of Fantasy,” in The Aesthetics of Fantasy Literature and Art, ed. Roger C. Schlobin (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1982), p. 27.

4. Ibid., p. 16. The definition appeared earlier in Colin Manlove, Modern Fantasy: Five Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

5. Charlotte Spivack, “The Perilous Realm: Phantasy as Literature,” Centennial Review 25 (1981): 133-149

6. Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Child and the Shadow,” in Language of the Night, p. 63.

7. Plato's distinction between the faculties of fantasy and the imagination is considered in The Republic as well as in other dialogues.

8. Jane Mobley, “Toward a Definition of Fantasy Fiction,” Extrapolation 15 (1974): 117-128.

9. Ibid., p. 120.

10. Ursula K. Le Guin, “Dreams Must Explain Themselves,” in Language of the Night, p. 53.

11. Carolly Erickson, The Medieval Vision (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 27.

12. The split in Western consciousness during the late Renaissance has become commonplace among historians and critics. Probably its most famous formulation is T. S. Eliot's phrase “the dissociation of sensibility” applied to early seventeenth-century poetry.

13. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London and New York: Methuen, 1981).

14. For a comparative study of Arthurian fantasy see Raymond H. Thompson, The Return from Avalon (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985).

15. In Modern Fantasy: Five Studies Manlove notes that Tolkien represented passive resistance and idealism for American youth during the Vietnam period.

16. For an interesting study of the circular plot as used by a male writer, see Colin Manlove, “Circularity in Fantasy,” The Impulse to Fantasy (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University, 1983), pp. 70-92.

17. The concept of “To go is to return” is not limited to Le Guin's fantasy but is also central to her major science-fiction novels, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness.

18. For a discussion of the feminist emphasis on the second half of the hero journey, see Linda Olds, Fully Human (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981), pp. 179 ff.

19. Butor is quoted in Jack Zipes, Breaking the Magic Spell (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979; New York: Methuen, 1984), p. 30. Zipes also notes that the impulse to magic is “rooted in a historically explicable desire to overcome oppression and change society” (p. 30).

20. Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 150.