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In an essay entitled "Mother" (Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, 1956) Aldous Huxley brought his informed and specu• lative mind to bear upon the female principle in general: . . . the Great Mother had her . negative as well as her positive aspects. . . . In India, Kali, the Great Mother is sometimes benefi• cent, sometimes terrible. She nourishes and she devours; she is serenely beautiful and she is a , _ , cannibalistic monster. In her bY Gwen Mdtheson positive aspect, she is simultan• eously Nature and Intuition, the creator of spiritual no less than of physical life. She is the Eter• nal Feminine that 1eads us up and on, and she is the Eternal Femin- ine that leads us down and back. caricatures appearing both in his She puts the sweet in "Home Sweet short stories and in such works as Home," after which she drinks our Crome Ye1 low, or blood.(1) (italics are mine.) Antic Hay--the fascinating vamps and This passage can be taken as a commen• pathetic female masochists, the over• tary.on Huxley's own attitude towards whelming mothers who succeed in women throughout his life as reflected destroying the emotional lives of in the female characterizations of his their children, the child-like and fiction. They exemplify either the incredibly innocent sensualists (as positive aspects of "the Great Mother," well as those who are not so innocent), or more often the negative ones, or very and the women whose intellectual or frequently a combination of both. spiritual pretensions are presented sat i rically. These interesting creations may be seen as largely the result of certain main Huxley was, of course, merely depicting influences on the novelist: the atti• with dramatic exaggeration the behav• tudes and behaviour of the society that iour of women as it results from their provided his material; that is, upper status in a society clinging to tra• middle and upper class , particu• ditional ideas. It is highly doubtful larly during the turbulent 'twenties that he was consciously aware that the and 'thirties, as well as the wider qualities he attributed to the "Eternal American society that he moved in during Feminine" (chiefly those of the "down the later part of his life; the in• and back" leading variety) might be fluence of literature, for Huxley was an more the result of this society than of any innate tendencies—and equally English major during his Oxford years, doubtful that he could know that his and once remarked that would not even books would be used as a happy hunting know how to fall in love if it were not ground for female stereotypes in future for literature; his knowledge of psycho• Women's Studies courses. logical theories of the day, particular• ly the works of Freud and Jung; and per• haps most of all, certain private obses• There is at the same time a definite sions resulting from conflicts and evolution in Huxley's portrayals of traumas in the author's emotional life, women which becomes evident during the as revealed in 's recent• last part of his writing career. In ly published two-volume biography.(2) his last two , The Genius and the Goddess (1955) and (1962), new types of female characters appear which, Readers of Huxley's fiction will nos• although they might not provide so much talgically call to mind a list of amusement for the reader, reflect an striking although now somewhat dated improved view of feminine capacities. This change can be related to the lished in 1918 Is central to the developing point of view illustrated in theme of sexual conflict in Huxley's Huxley1s wri t i ngs. early Verse. In it he employs his favourite Eden imagery in a sentimental "Passion and reason, self-division's Georgian style to describe a young cause" was a favourite quotation of man's state of innocence and idealism Huxley's from the Elizabethan writer until the inevitable "Fall" when Fulke Greville; and despite his eventual . . . passion ambushed by the interest in the all-embracing Nirvana aerial shrine of Buddhism, Huxley's thought always Comes forth to dance, a hoofed remained essentially dualistic. His obscenity. . . .(3) constant attempts to find some kind of fusion between the ideals of the spirit It was natural that for Huxley, descen• and the demands of the world and the dant of the mandarins of Judeo- flesh—as for instance, in Proper Christian Western culture, that the Studies (1927) and The Perennial Phi 1 - darker principle in the universe should osophy (19^6)--were reflected in an be associated with Woman who finds her ambivalent view of sensuality in gen• prototype in Eve. And associated with eral and consequently of women. Hux• such an attitude is Huxley's almost ley's dualism is expressed in the Manichaean obsession with evil and his psychological conflicts of his fic• frequent association of sexuality with tional heroes which provide the main physical corruption and death.(4) focus of his novels and in his even• tual interest in as a means Limbo, in which Huxley began to concen• of achieving "oneness" or spiritual trate on what was for him the much more unity which in turn led to his final congenial medium of prose further elab• Utopian social vision in Island. orates the dualistic motif in the novelette "The Farcical History of The double aspect of the Jungian Richard Greenow." Here Woman is asso• "anima" or female image is, of course, ciated with other qualities to be re• a universal archetype, but the first pressed besides those of sexuality and signs of Aldous Huxley's obsessive the "flesh," and the encounter between concern with it may be found in his the autobiographical Huxleyan hero and early poetry and short stories which the threatening female is internalized. constitute the most autobiographical and revealing part of his literary This story, partly set in the time of output. the First World War, tells how Richard Greenow, a rather effeminate aesthete The sonnet-sequence "The Defeat of studying at Oxford, develops a second Youth" in the volume of that name pub• personality which is that of a lady novelist. When he retires tor the ing degrees — Philip Quarles and his night after indulging in intellectual wife Elinor in Point Counter Point, for discussions and working for the pacifist instance. Thus dualism not only con• movement during the day, his feminine tributes to character delineation but alter-ego "Pearl Bel lairs" takes over also to the structure of the novelist's his body and writes sentimental novels plots. and jingoistic articles "To the Girls of England" and on the need to "crush "The Farcical History of Richard the Hun." Finally, dying in an insane Greenow" which has a strong autobio• asylum, Dick writes a note willing his graphical basis is also an illustra• body to a hospital for research, but tion of the author's futile attempt to the redoubtable "Pearl," possessing him come to terms with the feminine part for the last time, manages to change of himself—a conflict reflected this to an injunction to "Bury me in a throughout his later works. little country churchyard with lovely marble angels."(5) All of Huxley's fiction, in fact, may be regarded as a kind of autobiography Under the "farcical" aspect of this --a fact now made even more apparent fictional description of an "emotional by Sybille Bedford's massive biography. hermaphrodite" there may be discerned an important key to Huxley's subsequent Bedford quotes Aldous Huxley's cousin fiction. The "feminine" part of Dick's Gervas Huxley as being "the one man to character is, of course, grossly and know" that Aldous had no serious love unfairly caricatured, but it provides affair or attachment before the First the basis for supposedly "feminine" World War due to a Victorian code that qualities and their "masculine" oppo- made romantic love purely platonic un• sites in most of Huxley's later charac• less one had serious intentions of ter portrayals: the "feminine" element marriage. However, Gervas also re• for Huxley is somewhat traditionally called that in the summer of 1913 when regarded as personal, emotional, prac• Huxley was nineteen he picked up a tical and social, as well as being as• young woman one evening, an "au pair" sociated with the pleasures of the flesh girl as he thought, and was later sur• and romantic love; the "masculine" on prised at her "eagerness." (Bed• the other hand is impersonal, detached, ford, Vol.1,57)(It was not widely introverted, intellectual and inclined realized in those days that women could towards abstraction and contemplation. be "eager.") There are indications in There are a number of couples in Hux• Huxley's later writings that this sup-~ ley's novels and short stories who posedly trifling little incident had a exemplify either one or all aspects of deeper influence on him than anyone the Greenow-Bellairs dichotomy in vary• realized. Sybille Bedford makes the claim that the poem "The Defeat of beautiful and pure young Belgian refu• Youth" is about Huxley's overly ideal• gee, Maria Nys, at . And, in istic older brother Trevenen who com• spite of the fact that her strong- mitted suicide in 1914 apparently over willed mother whisked her away from him a tragic love affair with a young and the wicked Garsington influence, he woman outside his class. (Bedford,Vol. eventually found himself safely married 1, 46) But at the same time it can, to her only six months after the dis• like most of Huxley's other work, be astrous Carrington incident. seen as a projection of his own feel• ings and experience. We can now see how Huxley's double image of Woman, already fostered in his The young Aldous's education was then consciousness by the familiar Victorian further speeded up in more ways than "virgin-whore" dichotomy as well as his one through his introduction to Gar- dualistic philosophy, was reinforced by sington Manor, the country house of his experiences with two very different Philip and Ottoline Morrell—a kind of types of young women in real life. high-class "flower child" refuge of that time where , culture and Once Aldous had acquired the maternal free love were alternately indulged in and wifely Maria, he settled down to by the roster of famous guests. Here writing his first Crome Ye1 low he encountered the unorthodox Dorothy (1921) in which he immortalized Garsing• Carrington with whom he had what Grover ton Manor and its famous and infamous Smith, editor of Huxley's Letters, goings-on. In this novel the familiar describes as a "friendship" in the innocence versus experience theme re• summer of 1916. That this friendship appeared, this time embodied in the ripened into something else is revealed worldly-wise Anne (based on Carrington) by a reviewer in a 1971 edition of the and the wide-eyed Mary (most probably Times Literary Supplement who managed Maria) . to dig up a passage from one of Carring- ton's letters in which she describes a Maria once asked a question which had "nightmare" night with Aldous in 1919 often occurred to her when thinking when he kept angrily trying to find her about her marriage to the famous Aldous in the bed by "peering with his eye• Huxley: "Why, why in the world did glass." (Bedford, a good friend of Aldous choose me out of the many Huxley's, fastidiously leaves this prettier, wittier, richer,etc young little affair out of her otherwise com• girls?" (Bedford, Vol. 1, 95) The prehensive and objective biography.) obvious answer is that he felt the need of a devoted companion and servant. Meanwhile, Huxley had also met the And that is exactly what she was for a period of thirty-six years, as Bed- ford's biography so amply testifies. poetry and the pursuit of pleasure— It was part of the Huxley tradition although underneath the bright facade that most of the men felt themselves still mourning an early love killed in to have a mission and they usually the war. (Bedford, Vol. 1, 135) managed to acquire wives who were will• ing in turn to make their husbands represented for Huxley not their mission. However, although many only the infinitely alluring and men might dream of this kind of wifely threatening "flesh" but also everything dedication as an ideal they can also that was in direct opposition to the feel a certain resentment, conscious domestic devotion and submissiveness or unconscious, when they become its of his wife Maria. She played around object. with the well-known young author for a period, even granting him a brief un• Aldous Huxley was no exception to this. successful affair, but soon tiring of After about four years of wedded bliss this "weak, silent man" as she called and the birth of an only child, Matthew, him, she would send him home "miserable he began hankering after a very dif• and ill" to his patiently waiting wife. ferent type of woman, finally falling hopelessly and abjectly in love with During one of these occasions, however, Nancy Cunard, a more formidable and Maria commendably lost her Griselda- colourful successor to Dorothy Carring- like patience and delivered an ultimatum ton. she would leave England next morning with or without her erring spouse. She This young woman, a kind of combination packed furiously all night, throwing any of Isadora Duncan and Jane Fonda, has left-over articles out the window. And been described variously as a tigress, next morning she caught the first train dragonfly and cheetah—a "fiery and out of England—accompanied by Aldous. furious angel," in the vanguard of the post-war Twenties. She was in hot re• The Cunard affair, according to Bedford, bellion not only against the wealth, was the only serious infidelity of Hux• class and conventional morality of her ley's married life, but this by no shipping line family but later also means precluded numerous lighter es• passionately Involved in various anti- capades. Throughout his life Huxley Establishment activities of the time, indulged in brief affairs with many from the French surrealist movement to attractive women, often friends of the Negro cause and the Spanish Civil Maria's as well, with "no fixations as War. At the time Aldous Huxley became to type or age." The really incredible one of the many admirers under her thing (incredible at least to most fatal spell. She was a "gay divorcee," people) is the fact that Maria under• pouring most of her energies into took the management of these little Tt seems fairly certain that the vamps distractions, as she did of practically or sirens have their original inspir• everything else in her famous husband's ation in Nancy Cunard. And yet all of life. "You can't leave it to Aldous," these latter are presented by Huxley Bedford quotes her as saying, "he'd in his novels as more or less mere make a muddle." (Bedford, Vol. 1, 295) caricatures—according to Bedford, "stylized versions of the familiar It appears that the long period of de• Siren figure of the Twenties." Bedford pression from which Huxley suffered also makes a very interesting comment while trying to finish Eyeless in Gaza on Huxley's portrait of Myra Viveash, might have been partly overcome by this the one that perhaps is most directly "cure by affairs." And Bedford, a modelled on Nancy, if we are to be• friend of the Huxleys, makes a point of lieve Maria who once wrote that Antic describing the whole situation as "the Hay was an "exorcism." She finds it aristocratic view of sex." But reading "rather remarkable that Aldous did not through Huxley's many novels, almost even attempt to explore the character none of which depict a happy sexual re• of the actual Nancy, that he showed no lationship, one is left to wonder. literary interest in anything that did not lend itself to a generalization." At any rate, throughout most of his (Bedford, Vol. 1, This observa• life Huxley was apparently never able to forget the Cunard experience. tion is not only significant in provid• Whether or not he was able to resolve ing insight into Huxley's satiric personally the conflicting tendencies method but perhaps also, as we shall that attracted him towards two differ• see later, in relation to his earlier ent types of women, they appear and re• attitude towards women. appear in nearly all of his fiction. And the autobiographical Huxleyan hero Throughout most of his fiction Huxley's is often depicted as being torn between female characters tend to be cast in them—for example, Gumbril Junior be• the role either of victimizer or victim. tween Emily in her rose-covered cottage This victim-victimizer motif is used to and the cynical Myra Viveash in Antic illustrate two of the novelist's prin• Hay, and Walter between the bloodless cipal themes—namely, that sensuality Marjorie and the tigerish Lucy Tanta• detached from emotional involvement can mount of Point Counter Point. only result in exploitation, and that personal love that is selfish can cause the worst type of domination. The com• Although it is doubtful that Huxley's ment of the narrator in the novelette nice, passive and usually frigid female "Two or Three Graces" is interestingly characters are completely based on echoed by the analysis of a contempor• Maria (she appears in Bedford's biog• ary observer, Germaine Greer: raphy as much more positive than that), Our life-style contains more girls," who invariably are made to suf• thanatos than eros, for egotism, fer in one way or another. They are exploitation, deception, obsession young women who lead men "on and up" and addiction have more place in and with whom the major male characters us than eroticism, joy, generosity experience romantic and personal love, and spontaneity.(6) and sometimes even an exalted state bordering on the mystical. Such a young woman is Joan of Eyeless in Gaza One of the chief victimizers or "vam• with whom the awkward and inhibited but pires" in the Huxleyan world is the high-minded Brian (based on Huxley's Siren. Her figure tends to become more unfortunate brother Trevenen) falls in sinister throughout Huxley's fictional love. Later, of course, when Brian, son career. She probably appears in her of the idealistic Mrs. Foxe, finds his most vicious form as Mary Amberley of love "had crystallized out. . . into Eyeless in Gaza whose cold-blooded tam• specific desires," the ultimately pering with other people's lives for tragic complications begin. Marjorie of "amusement" leads indirectly to a sui• Point Counter Point with whom Walter cide. In Huxley's later fiction the hopes to re-enact "Epispsychidion," as diabolic Mrs. Thwale of Time Must Have A well as martyred Molly of Is1 and, are Stop and the "shameless" Babs of Island others of this variety. are simply further variations on this familiar breed. The Siren or vamp takes many forms but she is most frequently One of the familiar patterns in Hux• seen as a bored young adventuress of the ley's fiction occurs when the hero English leisured class — like the Huxley• turns from this respectable but rather an hero, a typical product of the post• passive and sexually deficient type of war period and also like him in rebel• woman to a more emotionally detached lion against a Victorian upbringing.(7) affair, usually with her direct oppo• site, the vamp. From there he either The female victimizers in Huxley's fic• proceeds to permanent disillusionment, tion in the roles of lovers, mothers as is the case with Gumbril Junior and and generally domineering individuals Walter, or he turns towards mystical provide the most dramatic characteri• conversion under the guidance of a zations and are central to the main male guru. The well-known scene in conflicts. Yet they are out-numbered Eyeless in Gaza when the dog falls from by female characters in the part of an aeroplane "like a sign from heaven," victim. bringing a bloody interruption to the private little "Eden" of Anthony and Huxley created several examples of what Helen as they indulge in some "irre• are commonly referred to as "nice sponsible sensuality" is an example of the kind of event that speeds up the Huxley's portrayals of mothers are Huxleyan hero's "conversion." among the harshest in his fiction, showing very little indication, either As is often the case in the depiction social or psychological, of how they of psychologically disturbed male got to be that way--as is the case with characters in twentieth-century Western most of the other portraits in his fe• literature, much of the blame is at• male rogue's gallery. tributed to their mothers. Mother in her dual aspect is the chief object of Woman as Mother is often associated with Huxley's ambivalence in his feminine Woman as Lover, constituting a strong portrayals: "She puts the sweet in Oedipal theme. The novel that perhaps Home Sweet Home, after which she drinks presents this theme and dualistic aspect our blood." There are a number of of woman most emphatically is Those Bar• possessive mothers who star in the role ren Leaves in the section entitled "The of Destroyer with a vampire-like in- Autobiography of Francis Chelifer." tens i ty. A more comic and explicit treatment of Although highly emotional, these the Oedipal situation occurs in After mothers are also usually idealistic Many a Summer (1939) in which Huxley is and even saintly; their domination is indulging in one of his little spoofs subtle rather than obvious and hence of Freudian psychology. A central male more sinister: ". . . there are wonder• character, Jeremy Pordage, is a scholar• ful possessive mothers of only sons, ly middle-aged bachelor, who lives with whom they baby into chronic infantil• his mother and visits two prostitutes ity," writes Huxley in Tomorrow and every second Friday to indulge in "In• Tomorrow (1956) and ". . . there are finite squalor in a little room." He wonderful, sweet old vampires who go and his mother gaily defend their mother on feeding, into their eighties, on the -worshipper son-cannibal relationship blood of an enslaved daughter." (Tomor• through reference to Freud or what Hux• row and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, 1Jl) ley describes as "justification by The husbands of these women are usually psycho-analysis—the modern substitute dead, absent or in some way ineffective for justification by faith:" and the intense attachment they inspire 'We blood-sucking matriarchsi' Mrs. in their sons leads to the young men's Pordage used to say of herself--in later disillusionment and trauma when the presence of the Rector, what confronted with another woman. A num• was more. Or else it was into Lady ber of Huxley's heroes or important Fredegond's ear-trumpet that she male characters are endowed with such proclaimed her innocence. 'Old mothers.(8) Jocastas like me., with a middle- aged son in the house.'(9) Another object of Huxley's earlier at• fines as the "bovaryzers" (after the tacks besides Freudianism were spiritual heroine of Flaubert's novel), and he aspirations, either serious as in the frequently portrays one and the same case of the saintly mothers or super• characters as belonging to both cate• ficial as for instance in Priscilla gories. ."Bovarism" is described in Wimbush's dabblings in Theosophy in connection with the influence of liter• Crome Ye1 low—a rather ironical fact ature in one of Huxley's essays en• considering his own later course in titled "Education" (, 1 ife. 1937) as the capacity of all human beings for "playing a part other than A variation on the Siren theme is what that which heredity and circumstances Fanning in "After the Fireworks" (Brief seem to have assigned to them."(11) Al• Cand1es, 1930) refers to as "spiritual though Huxley admits that imitation can adventuresses." Fanning, the cynical be "good as well as bad," a few of his and sophisticated novelist, describes most amusing caricatures have been of this interesting species to a friend, women with spiritual or erotic preten• maintaining that he prefers "the good sions, intent on playing a role. Per• old-fashioned vamp," because "At least haps the most memorable bovaryzer and one knew where one stood with her." spiritual adventuress in Huxley's fic• The "spiritual adventuress," on the tion is the tragi-comic Mrs. Aldwinkle other hand, wants "Higher Things," and of Those Barren Leaves, the middle-aged for these she needs a "Higher Person." English lady who plays hostess in an And Fanning complains bitterly about Italian palace and believes in passion, how his position as writer has often "passionately." cast him in this role: In the past they could have gone One of the most amusing and yet tragic to religion—fastened themselves on examples of a woman as both victim and the nearest priest (that's what the "bovaryzer" occurs in the long short priest was there for), or sucked story "Two or Three Graces" in a volume the spiritual blood of some saint. with that title. Attempting to escape Nowadays they've got no profes• from her daughter-pupil relationship sional victims; only a few charla• with her dull husband Peddley, she tans and swamis and higher- graduates with the help of the Pygmalion thought-mongers. Or alternatively playing narrator to the modern pastime the artists. Yes, the artists. of adultery, and finds two successive They find our souls particularly volunteers, Rodney and Kingham, who are juicy.(10) only too willing to continue her educa• tion. "For even in love, Huxley writes, Closely related to the parasitic spir• "Grace saw herself in the part and saw itual adventuresses are what Huxley de- herself, inevitably, in terms of her lover. Her Rodneyisms disappeared and hostess Mrs. Aldwinkle and Miss Thriplow were replaced by Kinghamisms."(12) Even• and goes off with a typi.cal attitude of tually abandoned by the bored Kingham male superiority to contemplate in the she is portrayed as a victim not only of mountains. Miss Thirplow is saddened particular individuals, but also of a but far from desolate, for after all she society that relegates women to a child• is a writer and she has taken care to like rol e. make notes of every detail of her love affair to insure that Calamy is'safely Although most of Huxley's central male laid down in pickle, waiting to be con• characters are nothing if not intellec• sumed whenever she should be short of tual or "cerebrotonic," there are no fictional provisions." (Those Barren serious portraits of women who could be Leaves, 303) Thus even a female char• included in this category previous to acter sharing the same profession as The Genius and the Goddess nor do any of Huxley himself is portrayed by him as the Huxleyan women, in any but Huxley's being primarily just another spider• final novel 1 s1 and , indulge in a spir• like devouring female. itual quest for illumination or the establishment of a philosophy.(13) It is To sum up, then, Huxley presented his true that Miss Thriplow the novelist in women chiefly in relation to sex and to Those Barren Leaves and Molly D'Exergil- men; and in some books, such as Time lod, that "athlete of the tongue," in Must Have a Stop, there is no feminine Point Counter Point are endowed with character who can be respected for her• considerable intellect, but both of them self. are presented in an extremely satirical 1 ight. It might be objected that as a writer who was primarily a satirist Huxley The lively Miss Thriplow is unique not would not be expected to dwell on the only in being that rare bird, a Huxleyan more admirable traits of women, and female with brains, but also in being at that he uses an ironical double vision the same time a supreme bovarist or role- in his treatment of most of his charac• player as well as something of a Siren ters of both sexes, with the exception and a "spiritual adventuress." The roles of some of the Huxleyan heroes. This which she has mastered to suit each male observation, however, cannot really be with whom she comes in contact range from applied. The faults and foibles of that of "a salamander, sporting gaily Huxley's male characters are more varied, among the flames" to "a primrose by the because they are considered as "human" river's brim" to "the serious young fe• or universal—for example, hypocrisy, male novelist."(1k) But her lover Calamy, snobbery, timidity, and many others. after indulqinq in a sometimes stormy and But most of the shortcomings of the fe• sometimes bored affair, leaves his aging male characters are comDaratively stereotyped, because they are frequently tral female character of the "goddess" associated with the sex of the in• appears as the most attractive of Hux• dividual— in other words, they are "fem• ley's feminine creations, presented with inine" faults or weaknesses. And the complete sympathy and no trace of . female characters who are objects of the The magnificent "pagan" Katy Maartens is novelist's keenest satirical attacks are described as having "the body of a those who show signs of too much spirit strong young matron," "the face of a or aggressiveness, in other words who goddess disguised as a healthy peasant have gone dangerously beyond "feminine" girl," and along with all that, a well- confines towards "masculine" preroga• trained mind.(15) But her life is far tives . from satisfactory for she is united in a symbiotic marriage to a combination of During the eventful last decade of Hux• "foetus, genius, half-wit and hungry ley's life, however, he published two lover," the famous scientist Henry novels which indicate significant new Maartens whose specialty is work on the points of view and in which dramatic A-Bomb. changes in his female characterizations occur. Katy, who was modelled according to Hux• ley on D.H. Lawrence's wife Frieda, is a The Genius and the Goddess (1955) and pagan in the sense that Huxley's charac• Island (1962) appeared long after the ter Fanning in "After the Fireworks" turning-point in Huxley's literary imagined the Etruscans and Homeric career marked by , after Greeks to be before Plato and later his conversion to Oriental mysticism Judaism and Christianity had brought as recorded in Eyeless in Gaza pub- about the "Great Split" between spirit lished in 1936, and after his move to and matter, associating one with good• the U.S.A. in 1937. The Utopian Island ness and the other with sin. (Bri ef is to quite an extent a record of many Cand!es, 156) But her young lover of the self-improvement attempts he had Rivers (modelled possibly on Huxley's increasingly indulged in, some success• brother Trev), thanks to his Lutheran ful and most controversial, ranging mother's influence is a "divided soul," from the to improve eye• tormented by conscience. For him the sight to the experiments with mescal in extra-marital affair with Katy cannot and LSD. bring about a reconciliation in the old flesh-spirit dichotomy, even though the The Genius and the Goddess was written relationship is deeply personal as well mainly during the summer of Huxley's as sensual. Rivers' qualms which are sixty-first birthday in 1954 while he referred to by his paramour as "Sunday was travellinq and lecturing in the School twaddle" seem to be justified by Near East and Europe. In it the cen• fate in the form of the gruesome tragedy. there is even a suggestion from But Huxley means this to be something Sybille Bedford that the then ailing other than just a moralistic little Maria had a private interview with tale condemning the sin of adultery Laura during which she approved of her and the death of Katy may be seen as a as a successor. (Bedford, Vol. 2, 173) symbol of the failure of Huxley's She could well have provided not only earlier Lawrentian philosophy of "life- some of the inspiration for Huxley's worship" which he later abandoned for "goddess" but also for young Rivers' the "one-pointedness" of neo-Buddhism. future wife, the spiritual healer Helen who never actually appears in the Although Huxley had previously created story. a minor female character based on Frieda Lawrence in Point Counter Point, The most important fact in Huxley's his portrait of Katy stands unique in life that summer, whether he realized his fiction to that date. Biographi• it or not, was Maria's fatal illness cal research may again provide inter• with cancer. That he seemed completely esting clues to the improvement in unaware of her approaching end, either Huxley's view of the feminine. through choice or in reality, is evident from the accounts of those who knew him There was, for instance, his acquain• at that time. In fact, as Maria dwind• tance during his excursions into led Aldous waxed, undergoing a "change" mystical lore with the lives of great in Bedford's words which brought to mind female saints and mystics, such as St. images of "sleek herds in serene coun• Teresa, Julian of Norwich, and Cather• trysides." (Bedford, Vol. 2, 171) ine of Siena. Huxley had, in fact, begun plans in 1946 for a historical Finally Maria died in February of 1955, novel on the latter (never completed) the year of the publication of The describing her as ". . . that extra• Genius and the Goddess, after long years ordinary woman St. Catherine, rushing of incredible strain managing to be about and bawling out the Pope."(l6) everything to a half-blind, globe• trotting writer who was one of the most Also during the summer when Huxley was active and experimental minds of this writing The Genius and the Goddess he century. Bedford reports that Maria and Maria had renewed their previously had once expressed some regret at never casual acquaintance with Laura Archera, having developed an interest of her own, the dynamic 35-year-old Italian woman, instead of devoting herself "body and who was eventually to be Aldous's soul" to Aldous's talent. (She was second wife. According to Laura in her actually in many ways more truly intel• biography of Huxley's last years This ligent than her celebrated spouse, a Timeless Moment, their friendship be• fact that he willingly acknowledged.) came more intimate at that time and And the summer before her death is This vivacious concert violinist and described as Maria's "tragic summer." film-producer turned psycho-therapist was very much the career woman with a But she maintained her dedicated role to life of her own. (She had some of the the very end, managing to keep up an qualities of Nancy Cunard but was at the appearance of health while at the same same time a much more stable and mature time probably hastening her death by personality.) There were many times, worrying about how Huxley would manage when she was writing her own book, see• without her. "It would be wrong of me ing her clients and running about the to die before Aldous," she once said, country to give talks, that she left "I should have failed in my duty to Aldous very much to himself even when he him." (Bedford, Vol. 2, 166) was ill. It might be considered signif• icant that Aldous was completely devoted She need not have worried. About a year to Laura and that she made the greatest after she entered into her well-earned contribution to the happiness of his rest, aided by Aldous's quotations from last years. The summer following his the Tibetan Book of the Dead, her berea• marriage to Laura, Huxley began the ved spouse dried his tears and married writing of his controversial last novel Laura Archera in a drive-in wedding Island (published 1962) which he dedi• chapel in Arizona. Aldous spoke of his cated to her. bereavement as an "amputation," indica• ting perhaps more accurately than he The plot of Is1 and runs briefly as fol• realized that his wife had been just an lows: Will Farnaby, a cynical journa• appendage; and he once said that every• list suffering from guilt feelings about thing that he learned about being human the death of this devoted butfrigid wife was thanks to her, which was probably Molly to whom he had been unfaithful also quite true. (Bedford, Vol. 2, 189) with a nymphomaniac named Babs, is ship• He did truly mourn her in his own way wrecked and washed up onto the shores of but it was part of his philosophy that the "Forbidden Island" of Pala, where he life must go on. (He faced his own encounters a remarkable society combin• death a few years later, also from can• ing 'the best of both modern science and cer, with the same mixture of indiffer• the spiritual disciplines of Mahayana ence and courage.) and Tantrik Buddhism. He becomes invol• ved in a conspiracy to take over the island for its oil resources. His co• It is at least to Huxley's credit that conspirators are Colonel Dipa, the mili• he was determined after Maria's death tary leader of a neighbouring indus• not to be looked after again in the way trialised island, and the Rani, Queen that she had looked after him. And in Mother of Pala, a kind of Madam Blavat- marrying Laura Archera he got his wish. sky and a representative of "false ." But he finally confesses It is relevant that the "left-handed" his involvement to Susila, an enlight• variety of Tantrik Buddhism is that ened Palanese widow with whom he has be• chiefly practised by the Palanese, since come emotionally involved and who acts it is this type along with Shaktism that as his private "goddess of wisdom." In attaches greater importance to the fem• the controversial final chapter Wi11 re• inine principle in the universe, and co ceives a mystical vision of Reality un• consequently to erotic mysticism and der Susila's supervision with the aid matriarchal elements—hence Kali, the of "moksha" described as a "reality- "Great Mother."(18) In espousing Tan• revealing" drug used for religious and trik Buddhism which stresses the recon• therapeutic purposes. He has also at• ciliation of opposites so that "Samsara" tained to the "wholeness of reconcilia• and "Nirvana" (time and eternity) become tion with this Utopian woman who is the one, Huxley is returning to his early final solution to his personal, sexual theory that the Etruscans and Homeric and metaphysical problems. At this Greeks lived in a world before the moment, however, Colonel Dipa and the "Great Split." This is what Northrop Rani's homosexual son, his protegee, Frye would describe as the "Social Con• take over Pala and bring about the tract" aspect of Huxley's utopianism. end of a relatively Utopian state. (19) Some commentators believe this early society to have been matriarchal — Jacques Heurgeon, for instance, in Susila MacPhail, the supreme end- Daily Life of the Etruscans.(21) Like• product of the Palanese mating of East wise who was a strong in• and West, is a far cry from Lenina of fluence in Huxley's mystical interests Brave New World (1932) and Loola of Ape developed the theory that the "primeval and Essence (1948), although her func• Golden Age of Man" was matriarchal and tion in Huxley's final Utopia is simi• that humanity must return to a similar lar to theirs in those preceding anti- stage but on a different level. (In utopias. Modelled to quite an extent the same way Susila, although sharing on Laura, she has much in common with the hero Will, except for his cynicism some of the attractive qualities of the which is the result of his damaging non- "pagan" Katy, also transcends her.) Palanese background and his relation• Therefore, it could be said that from ship with his parents. She too is an Huxley's early admiration for the intellectual "ectomorphic" type—a Etruscans to his later Tantrik period teacher and a poet who can compose he was in search of the "Eternal Femin• mystical Buddhist verse when required. ine" as a solution not only to his own This fully drawn portrait of Susila as problems but to those of a society where, one of Huxley's spiritually enlightened as the great Canadian Suffragist Nellie preachers, is unique in his fiction.(17) McClung once observed, there is "too much masculinity and not enough humanity." line" and "feminine" qualities such as intellect and emotion and spiritual as A synthesis of the saintly mother, the well as practical qualities. She is sensual female, and the enlightened the final resolution of the Richard teacher, Susila could also have connota• Greenow-Pear1 Bel lairs dichotomy. tions of the "Great Mother" in Shivaism or Tantrik Buddhism, who had frightening Yet she is somehow one-dimensional and strength and at the same time the benevo• serves mainly as a mouth-piece of Hux• lence of the life-giving instinct. Hux• ley's own Utopian theories. In this ley has always used Eden imagery to sym• respect she resembles the male charac• bolize a state of wholeness and harmony, ters in Huxley's novels who are also an escape from dualism, and Susila is mouth-pieces of the author's ideas-- presented as a kind of Eve who not only the inhuman preachers who range all gives the knowledge of good and evil but the way from Ramp ion of Point Counter of a state of Enlightenment transcending Point to the Old Rajah of Is land. Hux• both.(22) ley was never able to create a major female character who was intellectu• But as Susila symbolizes the aspect of ally aware, spiritually enlightened the "Eternal Feminine" that leads "on and yet believably human, as he at and up" in I s land, Babs and the Rani, least attempted to do with several of the two who play the familiar victimiz• his major male characters. None of ing roles of Siren and overpowering his novels has a female protagonist. mother, perhaps the only memorable characterizations in the story, are there One explanation might be found in Hux• to lead "down and back." That the Rani, ley's essay entitled "D.H. Lawrence" that fierce portrait of Mother as Des• (The 01i ve Tree, 1936) where he troyer, should appear in the novel that approves of one of Lawrence's state• contains the idealized mother figure ments to a fellow-writer that he (Hux• Susila who plays the role of Creator for ley) might well have applied to him• Will, the protagonist, is a final demon• self: stration of that ambivalence towards the So that after all in your work feminine that Huxley could apparently women seem not to have existence, never completely overcome, in spite of save they are the projections of his increasingly enlightened views and the men. . . . It's the pos i t i v i ty mellowed attitude. of women you seem to deny—make them sort of instrumental. (23) The character of Susila represents the A character that is still in many ways last and highest stage in the evolution a projection, as Susila is in relation of Huxley's female characterizations, to Will, would have to be one-sided combining in herself supposedly "mascu• and greatly exaggerated in order to be interesting. For instance, Susila in The other question as to why the advan• the "good angel" role is less striking ced Susila should appear in a novel than Babs as Will's "bad angel." that is considered by many to be one of Huxley's least successful from the Also as a product of utopia, like most literary point of view might also be of the other Palanese paragons, Susila answered by Huxley himself. He held differs basically from Will, the visi• the view, controversial as it may seem tor and outsider, in not being subject to some, that the happy life in a vir• to major conflicts in ideals and points tuous society need not coincide with of view. And in this twentieth-century great achievements in literature or art. period of the anti-utopia and mock The art given most prominence in Pala, utopia there is a common feeling that in fact, is that of landscape painting. the true utopia is by its nature less And Will makes the sarcastic comment interesting and more lacking in artis• that after Colonel Dipa has taken over tic tension and literary merit than there will probably be a "Golden Age of such works as Huxley's Brave New World literature and theology." We can also or Orwell's 1984. The principle of be sure that under Colonel Dipa's mili• synthesis or compromise, no matter how tary regime the traditionally Utopian admirable it might be, tends not to be equality of women would be suppressed so dramatic as the presentation of ex• as wel1 as most of the other aspects of tremes, just as the old Rajah observes a more ideal society. that without "dualism" there could be no good literature and with it there could be no good life. (Is1 and, 179) The final problem as to why Huxley should depict such advanced views as The question of why Huxley chose to put the equality of women in a novel that his ideal female character in a Utopian also advocates the extremely dubious novel could be viewed cynically as being practice of taking drugs for religious a sign that he was unable to conceive of purposes can only be answered by the a really superior female in any other well-known truth that people can be setting. But Huxley made the point that right-headed and wrong-headed at the his Pala is not Utopian in the sense of same time. being unrealistic but is rather his idea of how humanity might really be able to Still the fact that Huxley could in his solve some of its problems. It is not last novel even make the attempt to set in the far distant future but in the create a central female character com• world as it is in its more or less pletely different from any of the stock present state. presentations of her predecessors con• firms the description he once gave of himself as "an old codger, rampant, but still learning."(2k) And with re• in the present imperfect state of gard to his insight into the "woman social and scientific organiza• question," as far back as 1924 Huxley tion, vent themselves in ways that put in the mouth of one of his charac• are generally so deplorable. . . . ters an analysis that might satisfy (25) many of the most ardent of contemporary femi ni sts: Perhaps some day this "imperfect state" The physicists talk of deriving may be succeeded by a stage when we energy from the atom: they would can take the advice that Huxley once be more profitably employed gave : nearer home—in discovering some Generalizing about woman is like way of tapping those enormous indicting a Nation—an amusing stores of vital energy which pastime, but very unlikely to be accumulate in unemployed women of productive either of truth or sanguine temperament and which, utility.(26)

14. Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves (Penguin Books, 1955), 49. First pub• 1. Aldous Huxley, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (New York: Harper and lished by Chatto £ Windus in 1925- Brothers, 1952), 180. This book Is published in England under the title Adonis and the Alphabet. 15. AIdous Huxley , The Genius and the Goddess (London: Chat to c Wi ndus , 1955),

2. Sybille Bedford, Aldous Huxley: A Biography, Vol. 1 (1894-1939) and Vol. 2 39- (1939-1963) (London: Chatto L Windus, 1973 and 1974). All subsequent refer• 16. H. Breit, "Talk With Aldous Huxley," New York Times Book Review, 1950, 28. ences to e i t her of these two vo1umes wili be indicated in brackets in the text . 17- The Utopia has usually in greater or lesser degree included as one of its principles the equality of women. This was a concept not at all new to 3. Aldous Huxley, "The Defeat of Youth," The Collected Poetry of Aldous Hux• Huxley, on the intellectual level at least, as he had once postulated that ley, ed. Donald Watt (London: Chatto and Windus^ 1971) , 47. a more ideal society would have to be based on monogamy, pre-marital chas• tity, and legal equality of women. This was as a result of being inspired 4. The double image of the saintly "virgin" and her opposite the "whore" is by J.D. Unwin's Sex and Culture. He refers to Unwin rn a 1937 letter to interestingly documented by S. Marcus in The Other Victorians (1964) and J.B. Priestley (Letters of Aldous Huxley, ed. Grover Smith, London, 1969, traced historically and anthropologically by such critics as H.R. Hays in p. 430), and references to this writer occur in several places in his his study, The Dangerous Sex (1964). wo r k s.

5. Aldous Huxley, L jmbo (London, 1929), 115- 18. My sources of here are Edward Conze's Buddhi sm, Its Essence and Development (London, 1951). a study which has been described by Huxley 6. Germaine Greer, The female Eunuch (London, 1970), 148. himself as "admirable." I have also referred to "The Influence of Hindu and Buddhist Thought on Aldous Huxley" (a doctoral thesis written at Stan• 7- Yet this type Suffers, according to Huxley, fron a pjrricuiar form of ford University by N.K. Pandey in 1964). pun 1shment. Writing in Texts and Pretexts (1932), he comments upon the "vamp" as foIIows: 19- Northrop Frye, "Varieties of Literary Utopias," Utopi as and Utop i an "Those sirens who amuse themselves by vivisecting their lovers arc gener• Thought, ed. Frank E. Manuel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 25. ally of a frigid temperament, or if not friqid, are yet exasperated Iy in• capable of findina any entire-, annih1 I at ino sat IsfJCr:on." (Mew York. 1962), 20. Jacques Heurgeon in Daily Life of the Etruscans (New York, 1964) writes as 119. follows: "The feminism of the Etruscan civilization, strange as it may seem to us, is not an Etruscan phenomenon, but is a survival of an ancient 8. Biographical material about Huxley's relationship with his own mother re• and worldwide modus vivendi" (p.86). veals only that this superior woman to whom he was devoted died tragically from cancer when he was fourieen. His relationship with his colourful and 21. Richard V. Chase, "The Huxley-Heard Paradise," Partisan Review, X (March- aggressive mother-in-law Madame Nys was very ambivalent. April, 1943), 143-58.

9. Aldous Huxley, After Many a S.inrer (Penguin Books, 1959', 157- First pub• 22. Aldous Huxtev, The 01ive Tree (London. 1936), 205- Huxley also accused lished by Chatto & Windus 1:1 1339. Joseph Conrad of the inability to identify with the oppos;te sex.

(Penguin Books, 1965). 127. First published by 10. Aldous Huxley, B_ 23. "Some Important Fall Authors Speak for Themselves," New York Hera i d Chatto £ Wi ndus 1930. Tr i bune, 12.

11. Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means (London: Chatto & Windus, 1937*, 206. 24. Aldous Huxley, Little Hex i can (London, 1924), 280.

12. Aldous Huxley, Two or Three Graces (London: Chatto f, Windus, 19261, 25- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, 150.

13. Marjorie of Point Counter Point might be said to have attained a somewhat mystical state, but Huxley makes it clear that this is as much due to the menta1 condition caused by her pregnancy as to the guidance of the saintly Rache I Qua rles.