Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One's Own, explains the plight of women writers in the past--betrothed in their cradles,married at fifteen, they bear a dozen children, several of whom die, and then they bear some more. They had no education, no time, no privacy, and even if freed from all these constraints, they had no tradition to follow. She feels women were given prunes and custard where men are fed meat and wine.
Heilbrun in Reinventing Womanhood discusses the dependency of woman on man and the difficulty of making it in a male-dominated world. Women took male noms de plumes -like the Brontës or George Eliot; many found that the proscribed roles for women were so confining that only by some definitive, drastic act could they free themselves--illegitimate babies, living in "sin", lesbian relationships.
A few (I think Woolf was one?) had supportive husbands who recognized the genius within and allowed them the room and the privacy to create.
As for the creation of myths-just any old story won't do. It has to tap into the archetypal truths we all carry around in us, has to strike chords of common emotion and experience, provide a map in a way. Robert Graves said about myths---"THey are seldom simple, and never irresponsible." CAmpbell felt that today we are running on out-dated myths and need new ones--the questions will be the same, I think, and the answers too, only dressed in modern clothes taht we won't find as ludicrous as we now seem to find the older ones.
I am way past my bedtime and probably making no sense at all....
Have you tried any Joseph Campbell? Freddy hates him, but I think he's interesting. Much of what he says is based on Jung's archetypes.
Alex and Alexa both know much more than I about all this, though. Maybe they'll help out here. |
