3 Masculinity on trial: The Magus

My monstrous crime was Adam's, the oldest a nd most vicious of all male selfishness: to have imposed the role I needed from Al ison on her real ",If. (M, p. 341 )

Tire Golkctor leaves many issues implicit but unexplored: what is the relationship between male power on the onc hand and male sexual fantasy o n the other? To what extent is it possible for men to cha nge, to escape the script of masculinity, to abdicate from employing their power? Tire Magus allows these questions to be addressed both in terms of the power of a male character over women and in terms of the power over the reader of the book's fantastical voyage. N icholas Urfe is quile literally put on trial for his 'monstrous crime'. II is simultaneously an indictment of his behaviour as a man and a test of his capacity to change that behaviour in response to different values. As the design of the book makes clear, he is an individual example of what Fowles sees as male 'values' at work generall y on the personal level ofindividual relationship and the wider level of social processes such as war. In Fowles's words, he 'took on, if not the true representaLi ve face ofa modern Everyman, at least that of a partial Everyman of my own class and background.' (MRV, p.9) But the exploration of the issues involved is, if anything, more problematic than in The Collector. Though less directly perverse, the mystifying and surreal conceptions of The Magus serve both to expose male sexual fantasies and seduce the reader with them. Itselaborate tapestry is a fonn of camouflage behind which we can detect its origins in what seems to have been, on Fowlcs's part, a very immediate sense

45 MALE MYTHOLOGIES THE MAGUS of guill, or even angt=r, about male social power. for Greece, she calls him 'a snob, a prig, a twopenny·halfpenny If Nicholas is less overtly pervel'SC than Clegg as an example of Oon Juan' (M, p.34). male allitudes, he is no less a case study of the limiLSofmasculinity. The picture we get of U rfe is hardly auspicious, and the In the museum towards the end of the original version of the epigram from de Sade-'a professional rake is rarely a man to be book,! Mrs de Seitas says to him ' If there was a Department of pitied' (M , p.9)-can be read as both ironic and literal. The Young Men I should certainly take you to it. I would li ke to have book's scheme is to bring Urfe to account for his exploitative you identified.' (M, p.540) The label would probably be attitudes by means of the masque and trial. He is, however, such mo.l.t-prtdatory. As he looks back on his experiences prior to going an unsympathetic character even by his own report that one is to Greece. the picture Urfe paints of himself is of the classic 'lone tempted to question whether it is worth the effort. As he himself wolf'. This is specifically true of his approach to re lationships, admits in the revised version, 'All right. 1 treatedAlison very badly.· which he saw according to the needs of his own ego and which he I'm a born cad, a swine, whatever you want. But why the colossal manipulated by virtue of his social power as a male. He informs us perfonnancejust to tell one miserable moral bankrupt what he is?' that with women his '''technique'' was to make a show of (M RV, p.626) In Olshen's view, thiscasLS a partial doubt over the unpredictability, cynicism, and indifference. Then, like a success of the novel itself: 'Surely the main deficiency in the conjurer with his white rabbit, I produced the sol itary heart.' (M , characterisation of N icholas lies in his attraction for the females of pp.l5~6 ) This emotional trickery was self-confessedly a 'show', a the novel when he seems to have none whalSOCver for the reader.'2 playing-out of roles rather than an attempt at real relationships. it is one of the contradictions of the book that Urfe as a character He almost literally scripted his affairs: 'I became as neat at ending does not justify the amount of time and attention spent on him. liaisons as at starting them.' (M , p. 16) His hero was D.H. Despite Fowles's view that there is 'certainly meant to be some Lawrence, 'the greatest human being of the century' (M, p. II), progression in Nicholas's character',3 at the cnd of both versions whose atlraction for him, we learn later, lay partly in his vision of he remains fundamentally unchanged in tenns of his attitudes to sexual relations as male dominated, 'the woman inferior 10 man in women and his exploitation of his own social power. What change everything but that onc great power of female dark mystery and there might be we must imagine as subsequent to the cvenLSofthe beauty; the brilliant, virile male and the dark, swooning female.' book, as the retrospective narrative invites us to do. And much of (M, p.214) T his male mystification led Urfe into a familiar round , the time what we see of him is not simply an archetypal male buta of the pursuit, conquest and abandonment of the different women stereotype. So why has Fowlesconstructcd such an elaborate book he chanced upon: ' I didn't collect conquesLS; but by the time 1 left around him? Oxford I was a dozen girls away from virginity. I found my sexual There are a number of possible answers to such a question, the success and the apparenLly ephemeral nature of love equally sheer entertainment value of the book's bewildering existential pleasing. 11 was like being good at golf, but despising the game. quality being one. But as far as our argument is concerned, seeing One was covered a ll round, both when one played and when one The Magus as an investigation of male mythologies inevitably didn't.' (M, p. 16) U nlike Clegg, Urfe's 'disease' was, as he later leads into conLradictions, both in the character and in Fowles's identifies it, 'congenital promiscuity' (M, p.235), but they share shaping of the book. It will be of use initially to look at the ways in the same sexual obsession with power. Aiison, clearly his mentor which the character embodies central aspects of masculinity as from the beginning, 'didn't fa ll for the solitary heart; she had a Fowles views it and how those are invest igated, before considering nose for emotional blackmail' (M, p.28). She describes him as 'the Fowles's own position. affairt tU ptau type' (M , p.23). And later, during 'a white-hot It is the very typicality of Nicholas and his behaviour that is the outpouring of contempt for men' once Urfe has decided to leave pivot of the book's analysis. As a middle-class man of his .6 " MALE MYTHOLOGIES THE MAGUS gt=neration, he is a walking cliche and Fowles shows him up as feeling; but I liked things dry' is there as a tactic to show Urfe such. The retrospective narrative viewpoint is one way in which acting out the self-delusions of male imagery. The strategy of self­ this is managed. Urfe is supposedly looking back over his past exposure is a continuing one throughout the book. It maintains behaviour from the unspecified vantage point of many years (M, the suggestion of a potential for change but it is a notion which, as p.SS). This allows nOt simply for detachment but for overt self­ we shall see, the book structurall y discourages us from seeing as a indictment giving the impression that the later Urfe can now see real possibility except outside of this fiction. And equally, it also through his earlier manipulative attitude. Having disposed of functions as a confession, absolution through speech as in Clegg's Janet, 'a fundamentally silly girl I knew I didn't love' (M, p.16). case. The reader is put in the position of receiving this guilty man's he tells us he became involved with Alison ina way which struck a testimony and re-enacting his pursuit of the fantaSies of the deeper note than his previous affairs: ' I suddenly had a feeling that masque. These elements of narrative seduction become we were one body, one person ... A terrible deathlike feeling, increasingly ambiguous as the book develops. which anyone less cerebral and self-absorbed than I was then Urfe's masculine identity can be directly related to his time. would have realized was simply love. I thought it was desire. I Fowles has said that ' he was meant to be a typical inauthentic drove her straigh t home and tore her clothes off.' (M, p.29) The man of the 1945-50 period',5 and Urfe himselffeeis that Conchis later Urfe exposes how he used Alison as a stopgap before his was interested in him for 'some sy ndrome r exhibited, some depal1ure for Greece. He lied about the extent of his interest in her category I filled. 1 was not interesting in myself, but only as an (M , p.2S) and was 'deceiving her with another woman during the example.' (M, p.81 ) At the trial he is said to typify what Conchis latter part of September. The woman was Greece.' (M , p.33 ) The described in his supposed book The Midctntury Prtdicament, the stagey rhetoric of his note when he left-'Oh God, if only I was failed rebel who has adopted 'a mask of cynicism that cannot hide worth waiting for'-is blatantly denied by the sense of relief he [his] more or less paranoiac sense of having been betrayed by life' admits to having feh: 'The thing I felt most clearly, when the first (M, p,433). That this is directly linked to Urfe's fonn of corner was turned, was that 1 had escaped. Obscurer, but no less masculinity is left in no doubt by the tenns of the psychoanalytical strong, was the feeling that she loved me more than I loved her, report delivered during the trial itself. and that consequently I had in some indefinable way won.' His Fowles has done his best in his recorded statements to expose sense of exhileration at 'the voyage into the unknown, the taking this scene as a deliberate pastiche. He told James CampbeJl in wing again' is accompanied by 'an agreeable feeling of emotional 1974, 'that trial scene at the time was written as a send-up of triumph. A dry feeling; but I liked things dry.' As he walked off to psychology-I put in every piece of psychological jargon I could Victoria station, leaving a potentially suicidal Alison behind, he find. ,6 And in the book itself it is explained as merely one more of recalls that he began to sing: 'it was not a brave attempt to hide Conchis' manipulative fantasies (M, p.498). But the 'Freudian my grief, but a revoltingly unclouded desire to sing.' (M, p.41 ) jargon' (M , p.460), however comical, serves a significant enough 'This note of self-criticism takes us into a sympathy with the purpose by explaining Urfe's behaviour primarily in tenns of his narrating voice which it would be impossible 10 give his fonnerself psychology as a man. And the seriousness of that is suggested by and it exposes the cliches he previously acted out. Here we have the analogy made between his choice nOt to cat·whip Lily and Urfe as a 1950s version of Clint Eastwood, what Fowles has Conchis' earlier choice not to batter the Greek resistance fighters described as ' the idiotic and ithyphallic James Bond'4 to death with a German sub-machine gun during the war (M, image-cool, in control, untouched by feeling or involvement, p.440). using his relationships and the powe r of his privileged status to Certainly the psychoanalytical expose of Urfe begins bolster his own ego. The note of Chandler-like parody in 'a dry humorously enough: when in exasperation at his predicament, he

48 '9 MALE MYTHOLOGIES THE MAGUS gives his inquisitors a double V -sign, Lily explains that \ve may the amoral, permissive era of consumer capitalism envisaged by suppose a castration motive in the insult, a desire to degrade and Professor Ciardi (M , p.434). Meanwhile, Doctor Maxwell (Lily) humiliate the male rival' (M, p.430). The report itself is couched excuses Urfe somewhat by arguing that 'the subject'S selfishness in absurdly pseudo-Freudian tenns, all of which have their and social inadequacy have been detennmed by his past, and any resonances in Urie's case. Having been congratulated on the report which we communicate to him should make it clear that his 'normality' of his responses to their tests and trials, he is treated to personality deficiencies are due to circumstances outside his a description of his 'condition', what he himself earlier called his command: (M, pp.434-5) 'technique': Brought to account in this way, Urfe's trial shows him up to himself as the typical product of that post-war 'crisis of 'f he subject has preyed sexually and emotionally on a number of young masculinity' identified by Andrew Tolson among others in tenns WOlTM':n. His method, according to Doctor Maxwell, is to stress and exhibit very close to those Fowles uses here.' And for all its spoof elements, his loneliness and unhappiness-in short, to play the little boy in search of the lost mother. He thereby arouses repressed matemal instincts in his the report embodies many of the features of a valid victims which he then proceeds 10 exploit with the semi·incestuous psychoanalytical explanation of the social construction of male ruthlessness of this type. (M, pp.43 I .2) models and roles of the time. Fowles's dismissiveness about this scene of indictment and castigation is, one suspects, partly Urfe is an emotional parasite, fundamentally narcissistic, an defensive; for there is a sense-and we shall see others-in which it immature egocentric dedicated to self-gratification and playing and The Magus is general teH of a personally felt sense of guilt on out manipulative roles to achieve it. 'The most significant feature his part as a male. Thus, one fascinating point about the report is of his life-style', the report states, 'is negati ve: its lack of social its proximity to the obsessive male novelis t syndrome which content': Fowles identifies in his 'Hardy and the Hag' essay as at the root of his own creative drive, the compulsively compensatory mother The motives for this attitude spring from an only partly resolved Oedipal ~oss which The Coll~ctor and now The Magus see lying behind the complex. The subject shows characteristic symptoms of mingled fear and male J ekyU-and-H yde schizophrenia about women. The resentment of authority, especially male authority and the usual accompanying basic sy ndrome: an ambivalent attitude towards women, in manipulative fantasies of the male novel ist are themselves being which they are seen both as desired objects and as objects which have put on trial as forms of male power ina self-consciously tongue-in­ betrayed him, and therefore merit his revenge and counterbetrayal. (M, cheek way and Urfe is representative of the interaction between p.431 ) the male desire to control and to project fantasies in both respects as ordinary man and as surrogate male novelist. Central to this, the report explains to Urfe, is his family Urfe's inadequacies in relationships and his compensatory background, 'a troubled pe riod of separation from the maternal employment of power are linked to a specific social background in breast, possibly duc to the exigences of the military career of the other ways. Urfe told Conchis that his sense of defeat and subject's fa ther, and a very early identification of the father, or pessimism was 'not a ll me. It's in the age. In all my generation.' male, as separator-a role which Doctor Conchis adopted in our - (M , p.132) At Oxford, he was 'too green to know lhalall cynicism experiment.' (M, p.43 1) This has led him into a 'repetition masks a failure to cope-an impotence, in short' (M, p.12). His compulsion' (M , p.432), in the form of repeated affairs and artistic negative attitudes stemmed, he now realises, from the patriarchal delusions of grandeur, which are the 'normal culturallife-pattem Victorian values of his middle-class family. The repressive regime of the type' (M , p.433 ). To this is added an appendix, suggesting of his father, the public school and military service (M , pp.lO-l l) that 'breast-fixated men like the subject wilJ become the norm' in are the rooLS of his emotionally contradictory identity. It is the 50 " MALE MYTHOLOGIES THE MAGUS same repressed male English persona which Miranda saw in Piers all my life I had tried to turn life into fiction, 10 hold reality away; always I and which UI{C sees writ large in Mitford: ' I disliked Mitford had acted as if a third person was watching and listening and giving me because he was crass and mean, but even more because he was a marks for good or bad behaviour-a god like a novelist, to whom I turned, like a character with the power to please, the sensitivity to feel slighted, the caricature, an extension, of certain qualities in myself; he had on ability to adapt himself to whatever he believed the novelist-god wanted. his skin, visible, the carcinoma 1 nursed inside me.' (M , p. 532) This leechlike variation of the super-ego I had created myself, fostered Urfe now sees his family's lack of real humanity, 'Yet still that myself, and because of it 1 had always been incapable of acting freely. It was home, those years, governed me; I had to repress the natural not my defence; but my despot. (M, p,460) response' and typically he feels that in this it is he who is to be pitied: 'They had been wrong, at the trial.lt was not that I preyed Une's narcissism is most rully displayed in the masque which on girls; but the fac t that my only access to normal humanity, to shows him both scripting and being scriptcd by fantasies which he social decency, to any openness of heart, lay through girls, preyed projects and which control him. For this reason Fowles also on me. It was in that that I was the real victim.' (M, p. 525) invokes the patterns of archetypal myth and, as in The Collector, This suggests that Urfe was and, if the self·pity is a nything to go grounds the book in previous fictions, The TlmfJlst again being one by, still is acting out the social roles available from the script of obvious example. These show Urfe trapped by the legacy of male masculinity according to the legacy of his own upbringing-the fan tasies and power, and at the same time actively reimposing famil y, the public school, the army. Fowles allows for this view by those fictions as forms of control. deploying narrative devices which, as in Thl Colllctor, ca ll Like Clegg then, Url'e is the victim as much as the perpetrator of attention to the fictionality of the book and thus to the constructed male ideology; but as perpetrator, he has the crucial advantage nature of its illusion. He shows Urfe scripting his life according to over the victims of his sexual gamesmanship. The masque and the socially current models. At Oxford, he and his friends 'called a trial are the means bv which Fowles shows the manipulator be ing certain kind of inconsequential behaviour "existentialis t" . Less manipulated. H is se~ual insecu rity is exposed by playing out his enlightened people would have called it capricious or just plain desires in ways which challenge his dominant position, laying bare selfish; but we d idn't realize that the heroes, or anti-heroes, of the the myths of masculinity which he embodies. But the book does so French existentialist novels we read were not supposed to be in ways which are redolent with the very myths it focuses on. We realist ic. We tried to imitate them, mistaking metaphorical can see this contradiction at work in a number of aspects of the descriptions of complex modes of feel ing for straightforward narrative, specificall y the figure or Conch is, the masque and the prescriptions of behaviour.' (M , p.12) More humorously, halfway aftermath of the trial. All of them make an indictment of male through the book Fowles has Urfesay to Alison during the scene in behaviour whose bitterness and guilt are clear, but whose runction the Athens hotel, 'This experience. It's like bei ng halfway through is ambivalen t. a book. I can't just throw it in the dustbin.' (M , p.243) This is apparent in the figure of Conch is. He is the agency This self-consciousness serves a number of functions, but through which Urfe is to be 'disintoxicated' of his love of power specifically it poi nts to the playing out of social ideology as a form over people and his fan tasies about women. There are two of fa lse or limited consciousness. In fi ction characters literall y are problems to take note of. One is a problem which faces Fowles their roles and have no life apart from them. Drawingattention to himselr as author. While purveying an ethic or freedom and this and, as Fowles does, givi ng an illusion of possible choice or choice, Conchis is effectively a manipulative dictator, a sublime escape serves to call the lived roles of social ideology into question. patriarch, the surrogate male 'separator' oflhe report (M , pA3l ). Urfe's case relates this di rectl y to his male identity and his In an early review, Bill Byrom expressed an unease at the way egocentric perception of the world as focusi ng on him: U rfe is used in the godgamc: 'That a group of individuals should " 53 MALE MYTHOLOGIES THE MAGUS conspire to baffie another person until he comes to an improved only by contrivance. For, in effect, Conchis is the reprcsentativeof sense of himself, is to put ends before means in a totalitarian the 'female' values which are Fowles's touchstone, and which are fas hion which the author seems to condone. PelVading the used so ambiguously to expose male power and idealisation. book, there is a brutality not wholly acknowledged by the We can see this paradoxical process at work in one of the book's author.'8 We should not take fiction literally of course, but most powerful and direct indictments of male 'values' and the Byrom's point does indicate a central contradiction in Fowles's masculine ideology of .power. It comes in chapter 53 when work as a whole. For all his belief in the novel as 'an astounding Conchis describes to Urfe the atrocities committed by the Nazi freedom to choose', Fowles is one of the most manipulative of commandant, Wirrunel. It makes explicit a connection between fictional game· players and quite ready to admit that 'when you masculinity, war and a social death-wish that Fowles hinted at in write a book you are potentially a tyrant, you are the total The CofleclrJr. Having graphically evoked the horrors of Wirrunel's dictator,.9 I ronicall y enough, he seems both to embody and 10 fascist command, Conchis explains his own sense of shame: betray his ethic of freedom in the very narrative strategies he adopts. 'Beuuse these events could have taken place only in a world where man The second point is more pertinent. Originally, Fowles wanted considered himself superior to woman. In what the Americans call "a man's to make the Conchis figure into a woman based upon M iss world". That is, a world governed by brute force, humourless anugancc, illusory prcstige, and primeval stupidity.' He stared at the screen. 'Men love Havisham from Great ExpeClIltions. H e says in the foreword to the war because it allows them to look seriOUs. Because it is the one thing t.hat revised edition of the book, 'J long toyed with the notion of making stops women laughing at them. In it they can reduce women to the statuS of Conchis a woman- an idea whose faint ghost, Miss Havisham's, objects. That is the great distinction between the sexes. Mcn sce objects, remains in the figure ofMrs de Seilas.' (MRV, pp.6·7) Again, in women see the relationship between objects. Whether the objects need each an essay, he writes 'if the technical problems hadn't been so great, other, love each other, match each other. It is an extra dimension of feeling that wc men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all reat J should have liked to make Conehis in The Magus a woman. The women-and absurd. I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused character of Mrs de Se itas at the end of the book was simply an by an inability to sec re lationships. Our relationship with our fellow·men. aspect of his character; as was Lily. >10 And to Raman Si ngh Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all Fowles confessed how he saw the connection with Dickens's novel our relationship to nothingness, to death. (M, p.352) only as an afterthought: 'J belatedly realized Conchis [in The Magus) is a kind of Miss Havisham figure . .. very intercsting. '11 The 'craving to risk dealh' is, Conchis tells Urfe, a social malaise, Seeing Miss Havisham as a source indicates what is quite 'our last great pelVersion' (M, p.l14), the manifestation of a apparent in the book itself- that, as in Miss H avisham's dealings society dominated by masculine power. He berates Urfe person­ with Pip, there is a subterranean desire for revenge on men as men ally for his anti·Hfe attitudes on a number of occasions: 'you are involved in the 'heuristic mill' (MRV, p.IO) which Urfe goes sick, my young friend. You live by death. Not by life.' (M , p.377) through. By making Conchis himself a man Fowles camouflages For Conchis, Urfe's view of life was 'a disaster. So defeated. So that point, though at the same time it allows him to make Conchis pessimistic.' (M, p.132) h is an expression at the level of the the prosecutor and judge of his own sex's power. Equally, it alloW"S individual of the social negativity enacted by men in war. Conchis to act evasively as the surrogate for the myth that Lily We can notice two points aoout this. Firstly, Conchis' critique and Mrs de Seitas represent-woman as repository of higher of war is done in terms of Fowles's analysis of the 'male' and truth, the lost mother myth of which Urfc is supposedly 'female' principles of The Aristos. The truth fo r which Urfequests, disintoxicated through his fantasy pursuit. Making Conchis male then, is embodied in values associated with the 'female' principle avoids inscribing this myth into the very design of the novel, but which Conchis upholds. It is to this speech by Conchis that Urfe

55 I MALE MYTHOLOGIES T HE MAGUS returns at the vel)' end of the book when he tries to convince circular maze of Une's attempts to learn from his experiences. A Alison that he is in fact capable of changing (M, p.568). His quest sense of impasse is built into the very structure of the book. is to be 'feminised' out of his masculine behaviour. As with the figure of Conch is, Une's quest through the masque The second point is a broader one. By bringing in the war is suffused with elements of contradiction indicative of Fowles's episode in this way, Fowles indicates a connection between male ambiguousness in his treaunent of masculinity in The Magus. The power in personal terms and in tenns of the wider social processes various fantasies which the masque enacts are essentially of which war is a manifestation. Amid the fantastical ordeals in projections of Une's male ego. The myths of war, honour, and which Urfe and the reader are caught up, Th£ Magus contains above all women-women as a solution, 'that dream of two Fowles's most angry impeachment of men as warmongers, complementary, compliant women' (M, p.329), ' the charms ofa specifically in Conchis' accounlS of Neuve ChapeUe and the men.age cl trois' (M, p.280)-are a ll eXjXlsed and demystified, Urfe's village massacre. The connection and its contemporal)' relevance display of stereotypical attitudes being held up by himself asa lest are made explicit in the 'Foreword' to the revised version of the case of male reactions. Much of the investigation is done through book, in which Fowles expresses the wish that 'there were some Lily and Rose, the twins whose archetypal names embody that super-Conchis who could put the Arabs and Israelis, or the U lster central mythic dualism of male ideology, the pure woman and the Catholics and ProtestanlS, through the same heuristic mill as scarlet woman. In the words of an American critic, 'Lily is a Nicholas' in order to bring about the 'destruction ofsuch ill usions' cipher, a woman who never existed, who was invented, as concerning 'absolute knowledge and absolute power' (M RV, Ferdinand created a false Miranda, solely to cater to masculine p.IO). fan tasies about the nature of the ideal woman.'13 This suggests that Fowles sees waras manifesti ng the dangerous Notably, all the previous victims of Conchis' godgame have annoul)' of male power in ilS most overt fonn-what he has been men and all of them seem to have undergone an experience ca lled, in an article on the phenomenon of the Falklands war, t of humiliation. Uoe is thoroughly bewildered by the changing 'that lethal blend of machismo, braggadocio and hypertrophic roles Lily and Rose adopt, but the fundamental jXlint to note is his sense ofhonour'l2 underpinning patriarchal society. But for all the role as the central subject, 'reading' the ambiguous action of the sharpness with which this judgement is posed in Th£ Magus, masque as a reflection of his own desires. finally it is subsumed in the personalised quest of the one Mrs de Seitas later tells him 'My daughters were nothing but a character, U ne, as part of his search for redemption. Framing the personification of your own selfishness' and, when he justifies book in this way tends to mean that the wider social issues are seen himself by saying that he happened 'to fall in love with one of as an analogy for the individual behaviour of Urfe and this them' her reply leaves us in no doubt about the connection inevitably suggests that such social processes are the effects of between this book and Fowles's first: 'As an unscrupulous individual men writ large, rather than of men as a class. As a collector falls in love with a painting he wants. And will do resu ~ t, ..~owles puts himself in the position Qf locating the anything to geL' (M, p.5 l9) His fantasies are part of a mythology pOSSIbilities for change simply at the level of the individual of power and possession, which the masque reflects back as such. consciousness, rather than seeing them in wider political tenns as So, once it is under way, Une has 'the strangest fee ling... of well. The limits of this are engraven into the figure of Conchis having entered a myth; a knowledge of what it was like physicall y, himself: 'He was like a man who wanted to change al l; and could moment by moment, to have been young and ancient, a Ulysses not; so burned with his impotence; and only me, an infinitely on his way to meet Circe, a Theseus on his journey to Crete, an ~mall mic.rocosm, to conven or detcst.' (M, p.377) The problems Oedipus still searching for his destiny.' (M, p. 143) From the mvolved m such a position emerge as Fowles takes us through the moment when he presumes that Conchis' mysterious woman

56 57 MALE MYTHOLOGIES T HE MAGUS companion wou ld have 'tried to catch a gli mpse of me' (M, p.79), The eya blazed. 'Blasphemy, 0 roolish morta!!' (M, p.I89) he unhesitatingly assumes that all that happens is fo r his benefit, that Li ly will undoubtedly fall in love with him, and that he has What he sees asan enigmatic element in Lily intrigues Urfe as he unfail ing command of the games he plays. He never once repeatedly tries to contain it, despite warnings from both Conchis considers the self-imposing lim its of his view of the world, and the and Lily. It is simultaneously a quest and a power battle, beSt won one role he never imagines Li ly as capable of playing is her 'real' in his tenns through typically manipulative manoeuvres. H is one, completely outside the compass of his male imperatives. problem is of becoming caught up in his own illusions. At the U rfc's masculinc blindness is writ large in the masquc and Fowles point when he supposes Lily to have abandoned all pretence and uses it to probe the mythologies he projects and suffers from: have revealed her real self, Urfe caresses her face 'with a timidity I felt but would in any case have simulated' (M, p.306). He sho\'lS AfteraU, it was a masque, and I wanted, or after a very sho" while began to want, to play my part. I found something a shade patronizing in her his attempts to impose a recognisable script on each situation that attitude, and I interpreted it asanattempt to upstage me; perhaps to test mc, he meets and, equally, his opportunistic incl ination for self­ to see if I was worth playing against ... In any case, I found her far too pretty, indulgence. In chapter 45 we learn how he meets Lily and she both in repose and in action (o r acting), to care. I thought of myselr as a kisses him with a passion that seems to confirm his illusions: 'I connoisseur of girls' good looks; and I knew that this was one 10 judge all thought I fi nally knew her. She had abandoned a ll pretence'. (M , O1hen by. (M, p.15i ) 1'.275) By a typical twist of the plot, his fantasies are exposed for It is part of Urfe's own presumptuously patronising attitude that what they are by his realisation that it is not Lily but her twin sister he assumes behind Lily's various guises an Ur- Lily whose role Rose who has just kissed him. Not to be put out, Urfe ignores this must necessa rily relate di rectly to his needs, an object to be blatant contradiction of his new-found certitude and decides to possessed fo r his benefit. What fascinates Urfc about Lily is her make the mOSt of it with Rose: '1 smiled, to show he r I was totally enigmatic nature, her unpredictable, changeable ambiguousness, unfooled; but prepared to play a part in this new variation.' (M, an enigma to which he assumes he has the solution. In effect, he is p.277 ) Urfe's pursuit of Lily as the authentic ideal woman is correct since it is an enigma he invents: exactly that- the pursuit of an idea, the product of male desire, appropriate to male needs but bearing no relation to actual Lily gave strongly Ihe imprcssion that she was playing with me-amusing circumstances or people, and merely the other side of his Don herself as much as acting a role at Conchis'scommand. But all gam~ even Juanism. When Lily says 'You don't know how sk:k I am of be ing the most literal, between a man and a woman arc implicitly !iCxual; and' a figure of mystery', Urfe's response is 'Mystery becomes you.' (M, was clearly meant to feci that. Ir il was her job to seduce me, I should be seduced. I couldn't do anything about il. I was a sensualist. I wanted to be p.29I ) seduced (M , p.I86) The real nature of Urfe's idealisation is exposed in the contrast between his fantasies of Lily and his treatment ofA lison duringthe I said after a rew moments, 'You're trying-very successfully- to captivate mc. Why?' Athens sequence. Initially, she serves as an insurance in the event She made no attempt Ihis time to beoffended. Oncrealiud progress more of his hopes on Phraxos foundering. Before meeting Lily, he has by omissiOns than anything else; by pretences dropped. already begun to regenerate ill us ions about Alison as a 'standard 'Am P' to go by' and his possible 'protector' (M , p.99). He wishes at one ·Yes.' point that she, or her equivalent, were there to share his She picked up th e mask and held it like a yashmak again. " am Astarte, mother of mystery.' The piquant grey-violet eyes dilated, experiences a t Bourani (M, p. 117), but when she actually writes to and I had to laugh. him he no longer wants that, having met LiJy. H is fantasies about I said, very gently, 'Buffoon.' her, however, are still easil y displaced by erotic fantasies about

58 59 MALE MYTHOLOGIES T HE MAGUS

Alison, 'of the diny weekend pleasures of having her in some follows selVes to explode the male myth of romantic idealisation, Athens hotel bedroom; of birds in the hand being worth more to reveal this power at its most overt and unmediated. than birds in the bush' (M, p.144). Writing to her, he adopts a When Alison's lack of understanding becomes apparent Urie's pose which a llows a double indemnity: the letter has 'the right 'solution' is 'to get her back into the hotel, make love 10 her, prove balance bet\'veen regreuul practicality and yet sufficient affection to her through the loins that I did love her ... and why not, let her and desire for her still to want to climb into bed if } got half a sce that I might be worth suifering, just as J wasand always would chance' (M, p. I44). She was, he admits later, 'something that be' (M, p.243). The resumed attempt 10 explain infuriates Alison could be used if nothing better turned up' (M , p.2 17). The and her explosion lays bare the true nature of Urie's romantic blatancy of this is only outdone by Urie's subsequent intrigues. In fan tasies: rapid succession, he lies to Lily about 'this other girl' (M, p.191 ), to Conchis (M , p.206) and, mOSt blatantly, to Alison herself about I think you're so blind you probably don't even know you don't love me. his lack of interest in Lily (M , p.241 ) and his fake syphilis, to 'make You don't even know you're a fihhy selfish bastard who can't, can't like her sorry for me ami make her keep at arm's length' (M , p.217). being impotent, can't ellt:t think of anything except number one. Because The function of his re-encounter wi th Al ison is multiple. At its nothing can hurt you, Nicko. Dttpdown, where it counts. You've built your life so that nothing can ever reach you. So whatever you do you can say, I centre, it selVes to expose his illusions and manipulations, couldn't help it. You can' t lose. You can always have your next adventure. prov iding a counterpart in terms of 'real' experience to the Your next bloody affaire .. . All that mystery balls. You think I fall for that? 'disintoxication' (M, p.442) after the trial scene. It shows Urfe to There's some girl on your island and you want to lay her. That's all. But of be totally incapable of registering people's needs outside his own course thaCs nasty, that's crude. So you tart it up. As usual. Ta rt it up so it lenns. Self-seduced by her presence despite his resolutions, he makes you seem the innocent one, the great intellectual who must have his soon began to feel 'The lone wolf was a myth' (M , p.23 I ), and '} experience. Always both ways. Always cake and eat it. Always-(M, p.245) must te ll her the truth; and not as a confession, but as a means of letting her see the truth, that my real disease was not something Her accusations of emotionaJ impotency, of fear of feeling, of the curabk like syphilis, but far more banal, and far more terrible, a schizophrenia about sex and love that we saw in Clegg, all indict congenital promiscuity.' (M, p.235) That this 'truth' isa complete Uric, as a man, for moral bankruptcy; and that it is as a man is misnomer is shown by what subsequently occurs: havi ng made demonstrated by what happens next: he physically attacks Alison love-as he admits 'not sex, but love' (M, p.240)-with an by trying to force her to kiss him, and finall y slaps her face. infallible sense of timing, Urfe uses that moment to tell Alison This whole episode is centrally important in a number of ways, about Bourani and Lily in the totally egocentric belief that she nOt least because, along with Conchis' speech on war and the would understand and accept it: '1 had chosen the worst of all report in the trial scene, it provides a key arraignment of possible moments to be honest, and like most people who have masculine behaviour which, in its effects, comes nearest to the spent mueh of their adult life being emotionally dishonest, I bone of any in the book. It also has a structural importance, since overca1culated the sympathy a final being honest would bring.' the slap in the face recurs at the very end of the novel, seeming to (M , p.240) H is motive for being 'honest' was ' love, that need to be confinn that this is Urfe 'as I was and a lways would bc' (M , naked ... that need to be understood' (M , p.240). As always, p.243). But it also points an accusing fi nger at the male novelist's Urfe's desire to ga in sympath y outweighs his ability to own obsessional fantasies about mystery women, Fowles's sympathise. T he emotional dishonesty of th is confession can be ambiguous abdication of soc ial responsibility for 'that mystery seen as part of his strategies of power, confession being central to ba lls'. his use of the women in his life as absolvers of his guil t What The sense that Urie is ensnared in a cycleofrepetitions begi ns 10

60 61 MALE MYTHOLOGIES THE MAGUS be made concrete. He shows up his reactions to Alison'sdeparture connection between male ideology and fascism is made through in tenns identical to those in Londonatlhe beginningofthe book. his failure to sce relationships-he merely sees stereotypes of the He admits to a csecret relief on finding her gone (M, p.248). and ego. Wimmel is an ultra-manipulator who imjXlSCd 'chaos on congratulates himself in hardened 'lone woU' fashion in the bar order' (M, p.367) with self-knowledge, in pUf1uit of sheer power. over a stiff drink: 'I drank a mouthful neat, and made a son of Urfe, unlike Wimmel, is the victim of his own delusions but they bitter inner toast. I had chosen my own way; the difficult, share the same desire to manipulate and control. The masque hazardous, poetic way; all on number onc.' (M, p.249) He even provided a series of such object lessons for Une, analogies fo r his repeats the stagey note, asking Alison to write back, since 'It's so personal behaviour. Foulkcs is a paedophilc and a victim of the likely that one day I shall need you terribly, 1 shall come crawling law (M , p.126); de Deukans is a misogynistical collector (M , to you, and you can have all the revenge you want then.' His p.l60); Julie has been 'interfered with' as a child, so that 'with comment on the letter is '} thought it a good letter; the only even the nicest men, men like you-I can't help suspecting that conseious exaggeration was in the last sentence.' (M, p.250) they're just using me.' (M, p.306) In one form oranother,all these At this point Urfe's sclf-exposure of his past behaviour shows it are analogues for male power politics of the kind Une continues to reaching a point of crisis in which all the relevant contradictions indulge in. emerge as the masque intensifies and his quest for the ' real' Lily One crucial problem with the expose provided by the masque, becomes more fraught. He admits that he feh increasingly as if he however, is that the book itself acts to seduce the reader-perhaps we re part of a myth, like Theseus in the maze a\.vare that we should specify the male reader- into an imaginary pursuit of 'somewhere in the darkness Ariadne waited; and the Minotaur' the vcry fantasies it exposes. It repeatedly suggests the promise of (M, p.274). but this fabulous beauty and her beast exist only in the imaginative access to women figures, real or fantastic, who are labyrinth of his own psyche. part of the basic idea of the book as Fowles has crucially described Having learnt of Alison's su pposed su icide, Une realises his it-'a secret world, whose penetration involved ordeal and whose responsibility for his 'monstrous crime', for having 'imposed the final reward was self-knowlcdge'.H This 'pcnetration' is both role J needed from Alison on her real self (M , p.341). That does fulfilled and frustrated with an effect which is both tantalising and not prevent him from doing exactly the same with Lily. She now titillating. 'becan:e a total necessity. Not only marriage with her, but This teasing note is written into the book in diverse ways. It is confession to her.' (M, p.341 ) Une's guilt is plainly shown as there in the fonn of Urfe's obsessively sexual speculations, his evasively self-indulgem, even at this point: Alison's death continual state of erotic suggestibility, which is simultaneously heightens the 'hope ofJulie ', Lily's 'real' name; and by a 'si nister shown to be deluded fantasy and effectively used upon the reader: elision' he slips 'from true remorse... to d isguised self-forgiveness' ' It was ridiculous to build so much on thc sound of quick footsteps, as he looks fo rward to absolution from Julic-Lily: 'I was still the merest glimpse of a gli mpse of a white shape.' (M , p.123) detennined to lellJulie, but at the right time and place. when the 'Perhaps you are teasing yourseU' (M, p.l58), Lily tells Une. but exchange rate between confession and the sympathy it evoked there is no doubt that the book does so with the reader. It is also looked likely to be h igh.' (M, pp.342-3) there in the continual sexual awareness afforded by the art objects Significantly, it is at this point in Urfe's machinations that in Conchis' house-the phallic clock (M, p.92), the priapus statue Fowles locales Conchis' critique of male power in wa r,just prior to with its enormous erect penis (M , p.74), the erotic literature the description of Wimmel's atrocities. The structural link is Conchis gives Urfe (M , pp.90, 150). It is present in Conchis' story important since wc: have just been told of Urfe at his most of the beautiful Lily Montgomcry whom he loved and lost as a personally brutal and his most deludedly idealistic. The young man, with all its romantic nostalgia for this mysterious

62 63 MALE MYTHOLOGIES T HE MAGUS woma~ ~ho ~ the~ made 'real' for Urfe (M, pp.103-4). But most bring about an important synthesis of the two themes. of a ll, It IS Wrl Uen mto the vel)' narrative structure of the book By having L il y-J ulie take the upper hand and shatter Vrfe's Fowles's favou rite motif of the quest-pursuit whose twists of plo: fantasies at the same time, Fowles lays the ground for the lead the reader on the same dance as Urfe and with the same depiction of V rfe's subsequently violent reaction in away which is result, a disintoxication and a renewal of primary male sexual more coherent than in the later edition. T he sudden exposure to fantasies. vulnerability and the threat to his power reveal in Urfe the When .V,rfe ~e l.ls Conchis t h~t he is 'in love' with Lily, Conchis' underlying premise on which his idealising love is based, effective response IS ThiS IS all I have tned to avoid in my theatre. Now it is superiority and control. From being his desired ideal, Urfc tells us, t~~atre:-~ake-be l ieve a nd artifice.' (M, p.380) T he Li ly now became 'Circe' (M, pAI6), the dangerous woman with dlSmtoXlCallon Urfe goes through was designed to sober him up power over men, a 'prostitute' who had brought about 'the vile about himself.. The c.ruci~1 chapters are 58-9 and they are among and unforgivable, the ultimate betrayal, of me, of a ll finer the most heavily reVised m the 1977 version of the book. In both instincts' (M, p.41S). Like Clegg's, his reaction is a desire to versions, however, Urfe undergoes a symbolic castration in wh ich reassert his power through violence and denigration: 'Only one he is re ndcr~ powerless and brought face to face with the banal thing could ever give me relief. Some equal humiliation of Lily. It realities of his actions. made me furious that I had not been more violent with her In the original cd.iLion, the sequence desc ribing Urfe's attempt before.' (M, p.4l7) At the same time, he admits la feeling to. make . love to Juhe and the revelation of her duplicity is done thoroughly insecure in the face of Lily's autonomy. He recaUs Wit? a Violence whose effect is to absolutely humiliate Vrfe at the Conchis' description ofWimmel's torture room with 'a man lying basiC sexual level, s.howing him as pathetically inadequate and on his back on the table; symbolically castrated'; and when Lily dangerous. ~here I~ no sympathetic listening by J ulie as he returns to look at him, she seems like 'a woman surgeon who had ~nburdens hiS c? ~sc l ence about AJison, as in the later version. j ust perfolmed a difficult operation successfully. Peeling off the mstead, the anticipated romantic-erotic encounter turns into a rubber gloves; surveying the suture.' (M, p.412) humiliating frustrating 'sexual guessing-game' with J ulie posing One of Fowles's stated ai ms in rev ising The Magus was that it ~ow as a slave, n.owas Eve ('!'f, p.410). U rfe, with a contraceptive 'wasn't quite erotic enough' in the original version. IS The Installed over hiS ere~t IX;OIS, chases her round the room try ing revisions of this sec tion were presumably aimed at overcoming this desperately ~o ,get he~ In hiS power. He finally pleads 'Julie. Come apparent deficiency. T he turnabout of victimizer into victim is on. For. ChlSt s sake, more out of 'despair than pleasure'. She done more gently and with a direct fulfilment of the sexual forces him to admit 'I'm dying for you' at which moment, with a encounter. J ulie maintains the illusion of a romantic connection, drama nOt matched by the later version, the truth is revealed: playing the role of ultimately sympathctic and seducti vely submissive woman to the fu ll. Even the disenchantment is done 'J ulie?' sympatheticall y, as if she were regretful that the dream must be I saw her pale fi~re against the fa int rectangle; watching me shattered, almost apologetic for Urfe's ordeal. As a result, the for a moment. Her nght hand reached sideways. subsequent disorientation as Urfe is taken for the trial comes as a She spoke. T he strongest voice; as hard as glass. dramatic plot-switch, but without the bite of the first version. 'There is no J ul ie.' (M, p.411) Equally, the increased 'erotic' element makes the paradoxical mixture offantasised indulgence and Oagellatory guilt, in the fonn The suddenness with which Urfe's illusions collapse links with the of the ensuing trial, even more obvious. radical inversion of the standard male-female power structure to The trial offers Vrfe the chance to lea rn rwl to wield powcr, to

65 MALE MYT HOLOGIES THE MAGUS alman castrate himself. The 'viciously cruel vivisect ion of the process is apparent in the way he resurrects Al ison as an ideal of mind' (M , p.4l6) that he feels himself to be undergoing forces on trustworthy womanhood in contrast to Lily's duplicity-'her him a voluntary abdication of power whose outcome is crucial in normality, he~ reality, her predictability; her crystal core of non­ trying finall y to assess the extent to which, in this book, Fowles betrayal; her altachment to a!l that Lil y was not.' (M , p.474) could see the possibility for change in Urfe and in men in general. Fowles pushes his test-case to its limits through the plot twist of T he ve ry paradox of being forced into voluntary abdication having the supposedly dead Alison reappear, as the final stage in indicates the extent of the problem and it is this that the rest of the bringing Urfe to account. His reaction on discovering AJison to be book explores. alive hardly bodes well. Suspecting that she must be complicit After the expose of the report wh ich effectivel y explai ns Urfe's with Conchis' manipulations he feels be trayed by her and a desire behaviour both to himself and to the reader, the temptation to fo r revenge: ' todigor beat the truth out of her, to let her know how whip Lily in revenge tests how much he has understood of the vile her betrayal was. T o let he r know that even if she crawled hidden commandment behind his ordeals- the imperative which round the equator on her knees I would never forgive her . . . This Mrs de Seitas later makes clear: 'Thou shaLl not commit pain.' (M , time I would use that cat.' (M , p.484-5) It is hardly the language p. 556) Ulfe realised, he tells us, that his 'freedom', like Conchis' in of a repentant convert to the 'feminine' values of tolerance and the war, lay 'in not strik ing, whateverlhe cost' (M , p.440). But the love. Urfe's egocentricity, the root of his compulsion to gain disintox.ication with power is designed to go deeper to the very power, seems as fertile as eve r. He resolves nOI to search for Alison sexual foundation of his male identity. The pornographic movie since he imagi nes that to be what 'they' want him to do in the and the live copulation scene between Lily andJoe tackle Urfe at 'script' of th e masque. Almost inevi tably, however, he readopls the roots of his insecurities. But their function in the novel is the role of'hunter' (M , p.502), playing out his final mythical role contradictory. The sexual quest is fulfilled before Urfe's eyes and of Orpheus searching for Eurydice in a Fowlesian parody of a those of the voyeuristic reader, and the effect on Urfe is to detective thrille r. At the same time, he admits, he became aware disenchant him of Lily in a quite perverse way. He suddenly that 'a new feeling had seeded and was growing inside me, a grasps the original be hind her various roles, the 'seed of all feeling j wanted to eradicate and couldn't, not least because 1 betrayal' (M , p.451 ), a phrase significantly cut from the 1977 knew the seed of it had been planted by Conchis' (M , p. 496). version: '} suddenly knew her real name, be hind the masks of Lily, Mrs de Seitas, the 'faint ghost' of Fowles's Conchis prototype, ofJulie, of Artemis, of the doctor, ofDesdemona . .. I knew her real points the way for the still questing ' Mr Orfe' (M , p.51O) as she name. ] did not forgive, if anything I felt more rage. But I knew misnames him in his pursuit of his lost Euryd ice, Alison, and a her real name.' (M , pp.45l-2) We are not told what that name is, supposed moral rebirth. What is notable in her explanation of but given that Urfe's attendant had been Adam, we can hazard a Conchis' new morality of the elect is Urfe's conservative reaction guess. The root of Urfe's fear and misogyny, his sense of betrayal, to her ethic of sexual liberation. He feels a fearful nostalgia ' to is traced to that most fundamentally patriarchal of myths, the fall think of Al ison in this woman's hands. As one hears of a of man for which Eve, the fatal woman, was made responsible. countryside one has loved being sold to building developers. And I Ignoring the psychological explanation of this, as given in the trial also felt left behind, abandoned again. I did not belong to this report, Urfe's revelation merely increases his desire for revenge; other-planet world.' (M , p. 522) With the familiar landscape of and it suggests that, at this stage, Fowles had seen the male-defined sexual relations changing before his eyes, Urfe contradictions that might be generated in men by the imperatives registers his contradictory response: of change and abdication of power. Thal Urfe is fundamentally unaffected by the demysti fication

66 67 MALE MYTHOLOGIES THE MAGUS

... in one sense Mn de Sc:iuu had been preaching tothe-conve-rted inaIJ that other women. Because of her ' Beckett- li ke' appearance (M , she: had $aid about a cle:an surgical abscission or what WC'Ot on in the' loins p.549), she 'slipped perfectly into the role I cast her for ... She from what went on in the' heart. fulfi lled her function very well; she put off every other girl who Ye:1 something very deep in me: revoltC'd. I could $wa llow her theory, but il lay que:asily on my stomach. It noulro something dttpc:r than convention looked at us and on my side I cultivated a sort of lunatic and rc:cc:ivc:d idc:n 11 nOuted an innate: sense: that I oughlto find all I nc:c:dC'd transferred fidelity towards her.' (M , p.551 ) Whilst he feels fairly in Al ison. (M , p.548) safe from attack with her,jojo's vulnerability, her lack of any kind of pow-er, sexual or economic, puts her in a position of dependency Urfe can accept the liberalisation of sexual relations as long as it the results of which are almost inev itable. When she as ks him to does not threaten a fundamentally male prerogative embodied in sleep with her because she loves him, it issigniflCantiy the fi~t time the present disposition of power. His innate sense that he ought to he has heard her use the verb 'to want' in t.he fi~t person singular find all he needs in one woman reveals a detennining of sexual (M , p.553). Instead of givi ng her reassurance, he uses her again to arrangements in tenns which reproduce a male-orientated confess to: 'She was the strangest priest to confess before; but not structure. Andrew Tolson is not the only writer who has perceived the worst. For she absolved me.' (M , p.555) At the same time, he that a defence of the monogamous couple and the famil y is often realises he had transgressed the new law leamt from Conchis and the last ditch position of the entrenched male threatened with a Mrs de Seitas: he felt like an immature novice to whom radical challenge 10 his status. t6 'Adulthood was like a mountain, and J stood at the fOO Lof this cliff The contradictions Fowles shows in action here are central 10 of ice, this impossible and unclimbable: Thou shalt not commit pain.' the immediate relevance of the book to his time. What we see in (M , p.556) The contradiction between what he now knows he the ending is fundamentally a model of the reaction of ought to be and what he is registers clearly in the penultimate conlemIX>rary men to Lhe challenge made by those social forces chapter of Lhe book. He feels 'self-disgust' over his treatment of during the late 1950s and 1960s which moved women towards an j ojo and at the same time resurrects the lone wolf image: 'I assertion of autonomy and the politics of feminism. Fowles shows thought with a leap of excitement of life without Alison, of sett ing Urfe undertaking a retrenchment and realignment of his power in out into the blue again ... alone, but free. Even noble' (M , p.558). order to maintain it, not simply a refusal but an inability to In this frame of mind, a cross now between Cli nt Eastwood and change or abdicate from that power. This sense of impasse comes Ulysses, Urfe goes to tell his landlady Kemp he is leaving. Her Out in the cyclical effect of the ending. What has been implicit in response is perhaps the most vitriolic indictment of Urfe's the quest motif-that it is compulsively repeated-emerges privileged middle-class male status in the book: explicitly in what are esse ntiall y two versions in miniatureofUrfe's whole predicament, his relationship with the Scottish working­ "Tired of slumming. Thought you would bc. class girl j ojo and his reunion with AlOOn. ... You pick up a poor little: scob like that, God only knows why, then when you're: sure: shc::'s nc:ad over rucking hc:c:ls in love: wi th you, you act like: a Tnl When Mrs de Seitasgives Urfe the presentof a plate, she advises gentleman. You kick her out.' him, ' I th ink you should get used to handling fragil e objects.' (M , 'Look-· p.54 1) And his own anecdote of the butcher who planned to kill ' Don't kid mt, iaddie.' She sat square: and ine:xorable:. 'Go on. Run back Marie Antoinette with an axe, but broke down in tears when home.' co nfronted with her, bodes well for a new awakening in him to ' I have:n 't gol a bloocly home, for Christ's sake:.' 'Oh yes you have:. They call it the- bourgeoisie.' (M , p.559) Conch is' message. But his trea tment of j ojo merely reproduces his previous self-centred behaviour. He picks her up for com.panionship as a safeguard against getting involved with any

68 69 MALE MYT HOLOGrES T HE MAGUS

Castigated as a double oppressor by thisoldcrcounterpanofjojo, Urfe's attempt to manipulate the si tuation to his own needs. By Une goes off in a rage to pack and accidentally breaks the now, his view of Alison is sup]X)SCdly without any illusions, but it symbolic plate given him by M rs de Seitas. Kemp rmds him near remains idealising. to tears, 'the smug bastard, the broken butcher, on his knees' (M , Except for the very last paragraph, both versions of the book p.560). agree on a generally simi lar pattern of events after Urie meets This castigation of Urfe completes a miniature re-run of the Alison, though with some suggestive changes here and there. His central sit uation of the book-the necessity fo r men to be brought altitude towards her is intensely contradictory: he is aggrieved, to a point of realisation through having their power undennined. infuriated, but also he feels inadequate and in need, a feature But the repeated cycle suggests what the fi nal chapter makes particularly marked in the later version. His behaviour masks clear-that for Fowles in The Magus there is an impasse wrilten these deficiencies behind an aggressive exterior in a desperate into masculinity itself as there is into the script of his fict ion, altempt to regain the upper hand. He is shown basicall y trying to beyond which at that point in the his tOrical process he could not bully Alison back into the very relationship he had originally see men gomg. broken. In the fi rst version, when she leaves the pavilion he goes The last chapter begins with a self-conscious authorial after her 'pushing roughly past the people in my way' (M, p.562). interjection in which 'our age' exhorts the novelist 10 leave th is In the second version, he does the same but gives 'chase' (MRV, anti-hero 'at a crossroads, in a dilemma, with aU to lose and only p.647) and feels 'uncouth beside her': 'she had no right to re­ more of the same to win', si nce we are all 'waiting for this girl, this appear like some clothes-conscious and self-possessed young truth, th is crystal of humanity, this reality lost through middle-class wife' (MRV, p.648), and he clearly feels intimidated imagination, to return; and to say she returns is a lie.' (M , p. 560) by her autonomy. With ironic compassion, Fowles decides to give Urfe one last In what follows Urfe believes Alison to be still playing to chance, 'ten more days'. It is ironic because what follows isagaina Conchis' script, roles which he himself imposed. H is attempt to repeat performance by Une, though intensified. The events of the re-p?ssess her takes the same form of blatant aggression in both ending literally replay central scenes and elements from the rest of versIOns: the book, as ifFowles were suggesting quite logically that Urfe asa character representing the typical 'i nauthentic man' of the 1950s I said, ' I want to make one thing dear from the start.' She said nothing. '1 cannot possibly escape the bounds of his role in th is fiction. And by forgive you that foul bloody trick you played this summer. I forgive you analogy this replay suggests that the myths surrounding men in wh atever miserable peu y female vindictiveness made you decide to keep me waiting all this time: terms of soc ial ideology cannot suddenly be thrown away like an She shrugged. A silence. Then she said, 'BUI ?' exhausted novel. 'But I want to know what the hell went on that day in Athens. What the Urfe remains with Kemp, feeling that 'something in me helJ 's been going on since. And what the hell's going on now.' changed . .. .Conc his' truths, especially the truth he had embodied 'And then?' in Lily, matured in me. Slowly I was learning to smile'. (M, p.S61) Those grey eyes; her strangeness made them colder. Again this augurs a change which the reappearance of Alison in 'We'lJ sce.' (M, p.563; MRJ', p.648) Rege nt's Pa rk tests, only to find Urfe thoroughly unredeemed. T he romance he had anticipated in her return-'I had imagined The flagrant egocentricity with its underlying insecurity is this sce ne so often; and it was always in essence a melting, a matched by his presumption in assuming that she has in fact come running into each other's anns' (M, p.564)-is distinctly lacking, back to him. While Alison remains impassive, insisting that the sina;: she 'was cast as Reality' (M , p.562). What is apparent is masque is over, Urfe feels 'a sense of outrage, as if I was being

70 71 MALE MYTHOLOGIES T HE MAGUS barred from my own property.' (M, p.564; MRV, p.650) He tries wou ld probably follow her, since she representS a 'type of every possible lactic from aggressiveness to idealising wheedling: encounter' which he cannot avoid. The other elemcnt in his self­ 'You're the only person I've ever felt that about' (M, p.564; M RV, characterisation is his recollection of Conchis' views on the p.650, slightly changed). It becomes increasingly obvious that it is differences between men's and women's views of the world, and Urfe who cannot escape the scripts of sexual relations he accuses that he now knows it is important to see relationships rather than her of playing to, and that his repertoire does not contain a part objects: 'That's all 1 can offer you. The possibility that I'm that can accommodate this detached Alison who seems begi nning to see it.' (M, p.568; MRV, p.653) 'mysterious, almost a new woman' (M, p.565; MRV, p.650): In the first version, the aggressiveness of Urfe's expression 'What am I meant to do? Take you in my arms? Fall on my knees? makes a mockery of this; and the way in which that version ends What do they want?' (M, p.566; MRV, p.65I ) supports !.he view that basically Urfe has lealTlt nothing. After his From this point, the two versions begin to diverge significantly ultimatum, he tells Alison what he expects her to do ifshe isgoing in ways which suggest that what Fowles thought appropriate to a to come with him, literally giving hera part to play and scripting a man of the 1950s or 1960s needed modification for the man of the situation which he believes will allow them to escape from 1970s. But noticeably in both versions the male imperatives Conchis and the imagined masque. His scenario includes a remain virtually intact, merely realigned. As Alison leads him into simulated quarrel in wh ich he will slap her face and thcy will leave a section of the park surrounded by houses with watching separately, to meet later in Paddington Station waiting-room. windows and by a row of classical statues, Urfe suddenly has the Despite her attempts to break into this closed situation of his feeling that he has been manipulated once again and that Alison is making, Urfe leaves Alison no real choice. She does run after him an accomplice. His reaction is to take an even more aggressive and he does slap her face. Thc 'savage but unavoidable slap initiative to gain control of the situation and Alison. He adopts an knocking her sideways' structurall y echoes the scene in the Athens authoritarian role, put at its most brazen in the first version. He bedroom halfway through the book and the implication of the re­ takes her 'roughly' by the arm: run is that Urfe is fundamentally unchanged. Urfe's sudden realisation as Alison smiles back after being hit, 'Mocking love, yet 'Now listen.' I stood there at her shoulder, with my meanest expression. It making it', is that the masks have dropped, 'There were no W3.!l not a difficult part to play. That bruised face, very near 10 tean, but not watching eyes ... The theatre was empty. It was not a theatre.' in lean. I thought, I will get heron a bed and I will ram her. I will ram her (M, p.570) Alison's smile and his revelation that their actions are and ram her, the Ca t will fall and fall, till she is full of me, possessed by me. outside the jurisdiction of the masque's scripts are equally (M, p.568) ambiguous since he himself has just played out one archetypal male role and ends on another. His final pose is to walk off and The equation of sexuality with violence and power needs linle leave her, carrying with him the perpetuation of those myths of comment except to say that Urfe's overt desire for control stems power that serve his purpose, the lone wolf again accepting his directly from his sense of insecurity. His reaction to the threat of freedom: 'Firmer than Orphcus, as firm as AlOOn herself, that not being able to control Alison is to try to take her by brute force. other day of parting, not once looking back.' (M, p.570) But it is In the rev ised version, this passage is cut and his general attitude the freedom of the oppressor ra!.her than the oppressed. made less brutal, more solicitous. But in both he is imposing !.he Most male critics, symptomatically enough, take the slapping terms of their future relationship on Alison. He presents her with of Alison's face as a gesture of existentialliberalion. Thus Wolfe an unadolTled description of himself which is at least honest: he is writes that 'Urfe's slapping Alison's face instigates new life ... not ~uch of a financial prospect; if Lily walked down the path he signals new faith', 17 whilst Huffakcr secs it as affirming an escape

72 73 MALE MYTHOLOGIES THE MAGUS from Conch is' power. 'The slap may show her that he is no longer to terms with Alison's self-sufficiency and the 'something' in her '1 wearing a mask but honestly and beyond reason acting upon his had never seen, or always feared to see'. He urges her that he now anger, defying the godgame crew he supposes to be watching; the accepts her view of'love', but in a manner which holds little hope slap is also his way of choosing Alison, wh ile leaving her free to for the fu ture: '''I understand that word now, AlOOn. Your ChOOSC.'18 Both commems are remarkable pieces of critical word." Still she waited, face hidden in her hands, like someone rationalisation fo r a brutal action wh ich a feminist critic would see being told of a tragic loss. "You can't hate someone who's reaUy on a quite dilTe rem basis. T he way in which Fowles changes this on his knees. Who'll never be more than half a human being incident in the revised version suggests that his own view of it is without you.'" (MRV, p.655) more in li ne with the feminist one, as if he has rethought the Urfe never geLS an answer, fo r Fowles freezes the action as a implications in view of the situation of the 1970s. cinema director might, leaving the two characters in this The 1977 edition brings Urfe to the same point of crisis and antithetical stance in which 'All wailS, suspended' (MRV, p.656), impasse, but leaves him there with no hope of escape back imohis like stone statues themselves. Their posture is the emblem of a privileged male freedom. The scenario is similar, though he is less deadlock increasingly apparent in the 1970s between the brutal in what he says to Alison, more ready to admit that it is now challenge oflhe women's movement and the incapacity, as well as he who is the solicitous one: 'You have my part now', he says, lack of inclination, of men to change. refe rring to their respective roles in the Athens hotel-room scene This last point is of some general significance in assessing The (MRV, p.653). He still imposes the necessity of choice on her, Magus as an analysis of male power. Fowles institutes a accusing he r of 'playing to their script' when she insists she is going penetrating, though thoroughly ambiguous, critique of back to Australia; but her reton is poimed and as angry as his: '1 masculinity showing the interconnections between its action on came back because 1 thought you'd changed' (MRV, p.654), and the personal and wider social levels. Urfe's 'trivial little bit of it is this which instigates rne slap in rne face . In this version, it is masculine brutality' is registered in both versions as a form of presented as an involuntary response by Urfe rarner than po~ r poli tics common to male behaviour in sexual relations as in calculated or deliberate; but he stii! justifies it as 'a necessary act; warfare. Urfe's quest is posed as an attempted initiation into the no breaking of the commandment' (MRV, p.654). What happens way women view the world as made up of relationships rather now is that Fowles holds this frame as if the twO characters were than objects, wi th the implication that life demands slowly being metamorphosed imo a permanent stasis. Urfe understanding, tolerance and love rather than possession, control wonders whether this is not his 'last lesson and final ordeal. .. the and power. Thus, particularly in the revised version, the drive of task, as in L'ASlree, of turning lions and unicorns and magi and the book suggests that unless men are prepared to be ' feminised', other mythical monsters imo stone statues.' (MRV, p.655) His to stop hiding their vulnerability behind the masks and effects of pose becomes explicit as a banal stereotype of male behaviour power, then the world will go on being one in which events like the from which, we are told, the other strollers on the park walk away two world wars and Ulfe's sexual manipulations take place. as the reader might, 'as if this trivial bit of masculine brutality, the The problem with this is that it is essentially, one might say promised scene, had lost their interest also' (MRV, p.655). And necessarily, a moral argument rather Lhan a political one. It does Al ison's response is not to smile but to tell Urfe she hates him, nothing to tackle the problem of male power as a political reality, expressing in her tone 'hatred, pain, every female resentment because it locates any process of change in men at the level of the since time began' (MRV, p.655). Urfe is finally cast as repentant individual being educated into a new awareness. Nor does it petitioner rather than devil-may-care individualist. His final tackle the inevitable problem of the reluctance, not to say w0r?s indicate a guilt-ridden desperation as he struggles to come resistance, of men as individuals and as a social class voluntarily to

74 75 MALE MYrHOLOGlES THE MAGUS abdicate from power. This absence ofa political dimension to the occasions allowed glimpses of what that 'personal experience of analysis in The Magus is almost inevitable given both the way Greece' which shaped The Magus might mean, and in such a way Fowles has framed the narrative structure and the fact that as a as to hinl that the trial ofNicholas Urfe may have much todo with male novelist he belongs to and shares the contradictions of the an exorcism on Fowles's part of his own senseofbeingcomplicit in group he is analysing. And this comes through most obviously in the 'crime' of masculinity. that central contradiction within his work as a whole-that in In a 'Note' published in 1973 to accompany his 1951·2 'Greek order to effect h is demythologising on masculinity, he invokes a Poems', Fowles explains '1 have included them here because, reconstituted version of one of the central male myths he analyses, together with the sense of loss I felt when various circumstances the ideal female as a corrective to the male. The repeated cycle of obliged me to put myselfin pcnnanentexile from Greece, they are Urfe's actions in the book suggest an impasse which Fowles the ground from which the novel eventuall y grew.>22 When The himself is caught in, a continued retrenchment of the male Magus was published in revised fonn in 1977, Fowles discussed its position allowing the retention of power in realigned fonns. origins in the foreword which, after mentioning the influence of Whether this is the only option is exactly the question which the island of SpelSai and its atmosphere, includes this comment: The Magus in its revised form leaves us with. As far as Fowlcs himself is concerned, the roots of his impasse in this book perhaps No correlative whatever of my fiction, beyond the aoove, took place on lie in the fact that, although published after The Collector, it was his Spetsai during my stay. What ground the: evc:ntsofthc book have in reality earliest attempt to d isengage himself from his own masculine came aflcr I had returned to England. I had escaped CiTee, but the experience in order to look at it criLically. He wrOte the first draft withdrawal symptoms were severe. I had nOl then realised that loss is I essential for the novelist, immensely fertile for his books, however painful to version in 1953 and, as he told Daniel Ha lpern in 1971, 'In a way his privatI': being. This unresolved sense of a Jack, a missed opportunity, led the book was a metaphor for my own personal experience of me 10 graft certain dilemmas of a private situation in England on the Greece. An allegory, if you li ke. At least that's how it started. 't9 Of memory of the island and its soiiludes, which became increasingly forme the course there are a number of ways in which, as this suggests, the lost Eden, the domaine Ian.! num of Alain·foumier. (MRV, p.9) book might have related to Fowles's own experience. But this I 'young man's first novel. this sort of adolescent book'2o has a Alain-Fournier's book Le Grand Meaulnes has often been curiously sharp edge to its expose of masculine violence which acknowledged by Fowles as a central influence on his own work, invites a suspicion that it bears some sense of personally felt guilt 'partly because there isa link with private events in my life I do not about being a man. wish to discuss.'23 Again, writing in 1978 to Robert Huffaker It is not a lways proper to speculate on an author's personal aoout the biographical fact that he met his future wife on Spetsai experience and, as an a pproach to a text, it can be quite whilst she was married to another teacher, Fowles says 'None of misleading. Fowles has warned that the influence of Freudian and that had any influence on the genesis or plot of The Magus Jungian theory on an author may make it 'less and less certain whatever. I drew on the experience in one or two very general nowadays that his symbols and "echoes" necessarily reveal ways, in tenns of mood, guilt and so on-as one draws on all anything of the author's private psyche', so that 'much more experience- but in direct ways, not at a ll .'24 And writing his caution is needed on the part of the analyst,.21 Moresternly, he has 'Personal Note' to the translation of Elidue, a text which, via 'The understandably warned 'No writer will happily disclose the Ebony Tower', seems to have the same 'emotional' relationship lO deeper biographical influences of his work, wh ich are seldom The Magus as u Grand Meauines, Fowles writes 'the unexplained those of outward date and occupa Lion, and I am no exception.' mystery, as every agnostic and novelist knows, is black proof of an ( M~V, p.7 ) But in his published work, Fowles hason a number of ultimate shirking of creative responsibility. I have a dead weasel 76 I 77 MALE MYTHOLOGIES T H E MAGUS on my conscience; and deeper still, a dead woman.' (ET, p.119) asks and his answer is 'Not very much, no'. (MRV, p.627) Eliduc is a medieval romance tale ofa man's betrayal ofhis wife for Significantly enough, this revised edition of 'Th4 Magus with its a young princess and, as Constance H ieau puts it, 'his duplicity sharpened sense of the urgency for men to change appeared the causes her {the princess'] death'.2s year before Fowles's most contemporary and politically grounded For all these tantalising and diverse glimpses, it is not the analysis of masculinity in Daniel Martin. But before we examine precise nature of the biographical background to The Magus that that novel, we need to look at his exploration oflhe historical roots matter.; here, and it may we ll be that these individual fragments behind the contemporary fonus which his male character.; bear no relation to each other besides being J ohn Fowles's own epitomise. This he conducted in The French Lieutenant's Woman. private damaine. What is of interest is the recurrent sense=: of personal guilt they suggest. The Magus, Fowles told H uflaker, was a book that 'had to be exorcised,.26 If there is any basis for see ing the sense of guilt in the book as pcr.;onally fe h, perhaps this is one reason why he mystified it through his recourse to the fantastic and the enchamed. O ne reason fo r writing 'T he Ebony Tower', he told Robcn Robinson in 1974, was that 'In a way I wanted to demystify The Magus, which I th ink was a ltogether tOO fu ll of mystery.'27 And in his foreword to the poems he writes that poetry ' is nonnally a good deal more revea ling of the writer than prose fiction. I suspeCt mOSt novelists are trying LOcamouflage a sense of personal inadequacy in the face of real life-a sentiment that is compounded in the act of creating fi ction, the fabrication of li terary lies, ingenious fantasies, to hide a fundamental psychological or sociological fault of personality. ' The novelist, he=: says, is in 'penuane=:m night from the=: mirror.'28 In one sense this tells us what the Hardy essay also made clear, that the male novelist's drive is part of an obsessive escapism, a schizophrenic desire to hide from life's mirror by creating in the novel a mirror for the lost sense of self and unity embodied in the mother fi gure. But what we also glean is a sublimated personal engagement wh ich may go to explain why The Magusfunctions in two comrary ways at one and the same time, a confession of guilt and an extended indulgence of the very fantasies it seeks to ind ict or exorcise. Urfe is both a whipping-boy and a vehicle for sexual fa ntasy, a medium for self- flagel lation but of the most ambivalent kind. In the museum scene at the end of the revised ver.;ion, Mr.; de Se itas asks Urfe what he thinks the purpose of evolution is: '1 shrugged. " That it allows the duds like me freedom to become a little less imperfec t?"'. 'Had you done anything about it?', she

18 79