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Women, Sex, and Power: Circe and Lilith in Narnia the White Witch Of

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Women, Sex, and Power: Circe and Lilith in Narnia the White Witch Of Women, Sex, and Power: Circe and Lilith in Narnia The White Witch of the Narnian Chronicles "is of course Circe," C. S. Lewis wrote in an unpublished (1954) letter (Schakel 140). But the Witch is also Lilith, as Mr. Beaver explains to the children in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe : "'She comes of your father Adam's . first wife, her they called Lilith'" (81). Although there are influences on Lewis's Witch other than Circe and Lilith, the White Witch and her successor the Emerald Witch possess dangerous qualities—the qualities of female sexuality and power—that can derive only from Circe and Lilith in their mythological, Renaissance, and Victorian manifestations. Lewis's Christian mythos unites Circe and Lilith with Satan, in the latter’s biblical and Miltonic manifestations. Good and evil become polarized along gender lines: the deity remains masculine, while the two witches replace male characters in assuming responsibility for the fall of mankind and the crucifixion of mankind's Savior. On the other hand, the girls in the Narnian Chronicles play active, positive roles. 1 The impression left on readers by Lewis’s children’s stories, and confirmed by his other fiction, is that puberty ends the freedom of girls to assume nontraditional roles. A girl influenced by Narnia might well determine never to grow up. Thus, a study of his application of the Lilith and Circe myths to children’s literature demonstrates that, although Lewis rather predictably sanitizes the sexuality of the two myths, his Narnian novels contain all the same ambivalence about female power as does his writing for adult audiences. As a literary scholar, Lewis was familiar with the Circe of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid: her enchanted food and phallic wand capable of transforming men into swine, her Circe and Lilith 2 of 23 beauty and her seduction of Odysseus. In The Odyssey , "the nymph with lovely braids" mixed a potion for Odysseus's men, "but into the brew she stirred her wicked drugs / to wipe from their memories any thought of home" (X, 259-60). Then "suddenly / she struck with her wand, drove them into her pigsties, / all of them bristling into swine" (261-63). Odysseus is protected from her magic by a magic herb, moly, given him by Hermes; when Circe tries to transform Odysseus, he draws his sword "and rush[es] her fast as if to run her through" (358). "Come, sheathe your sword, let's go to bed together," she responds (370). Ovid's Metamorphoses retells the story with added commentary. Although Circe is the daughter of the Sun, she is quite capable of summoning "Night and the gods of Night / . forth from hell; Chaos itself she invoked; / and Hecate, witchcraft's mistress" (XIV, 5-7). Ovid makes the conflict between Circe and Odysseus even more a competition of phallic symbols, as Odysseus uses the moly to "fend off the wand / she waved about"; when he draws his sword, she gladly concedes to a better man: "She had met her match, her master. / She wasn't at all dismayed, but pleased, even delighted" (XIV, 283-84, 286-87). The phallic wand was an important part of Circe's portrayal in early modern Europe, when her usurpation of masculine power was emphasized in woodcuts showing her with a wand, while a male victim kneels before her. In the opinion of Judith Yarnall, "[t]hese woodcuts accord well with the woman-on-top topos that sported with--but did not seriously challenge--the prevailing sexual order of the times" (101). Circe and her wand feature in masques such as William Browne's Inner Temple Masque (1614) and Circe and Lilith 3 of 23 Aurelian Townshend's Tempe Restored (1632), as well as in art (Yarnall 147). The early modern period's most significant literary Circe figure is Comus in Milton's Maske (1634); this is also the Circe probably most familiar to Lewis, who taught and wrote about Milton. The son of Circe and Bacchus, Comus has inherited from his mother her "charmed Cup," a taste from which turns humans into swine (51). Comus kidnaps the nameless Lady, imprisoning her in a chair with a wave of his wand. One of Lewis’s witches handles a prince similarly. While grotesque figures with the heads of animals cavort about Milton’s Lady and Comus, he urges her to drink from his cup and join in the revels, while she opposes him with "the Sun-clad power of Chastity" (782). When her two young brothers appear, they destroy the cup, but Comus flees with the wand. The Spirit sent by Jove to be their guide admonishes the boys: "without his rod revers't, / And backward mutters of dissevering power, / We cannot free the Lady" (816- 18). Lacking the power to release the Lady from her chair, they seek assistance from Sabrina, the goddess of the river Severn, who breaks the spell. Since the Lady successfully rejects temptation, her conflict with Comus resembles Christ's temptation by Satan in the wilderness as well as Odysseus's defeat of Circe (Shawcross 50-51). Lilith is sufficiently similar to Circe, especially in her association with animals and her dangerous sexuality, that a 4000-year-old Babylonian plaque of a winged goddess surrounded by owls and lions has been identified as a possible source for both Circe (Yarnall 39) and Lilith (Patai 222). 2 Lilith entered Jewish mythology through Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, probably as an attempt to resolve apparent contradictions between the creation stories of the first and second chapters of Genesis (Plaskow 54; Circe and Lilith 4 of 23 Koltuv 10). She "has been wholly exorcized from the Bible," except for Isaiah 34:14, in which she is said to "lurk and find somewhere to rest" in the ruined fortresses of Edom (Graves and Patai 12). Christian apologist Lewis would have known this passage, and would have been acquainted with the Kabala through his friend Charles Williams. The Kabala contains many variations of Lilith's story, but each portrays her as a clear danger to humanity. The variations are well reported by Patai: Lilith is described as a beautiful woman with long loose hair and/or wings; as an old hag; as a warrior; or as a serpent. Associated with night, the moon, the owl, animals in general, the sea, the desert, and ruined cities, she has served as the consort of Leviathan the serpent and Samael the Devil. She was created like Adam, only from filth rather than dust or earth; or she was Adam's other half, sawed from his side; or she emerged with Samael from under God's throne and desired to become one of the cherubim. As Adam's first wife, she refused his sexual overtures, asserting that she was his equal and thus should not have to lie beneath him. To escape Adam, she spoke God's name and flew away to the Red Sea, where she took many lovers, producing demon children to plague mankind. Three angels brought her back to Adam. Her punishment for running away is the death of a hundred of her children daily. Alternatively, she has no children, for God made her barren, with no milk in her breasts, and a drop of her menstrual blood can kill an entire town. In one version, Lilith caused the fall by inciting the menstruating Eve to seduce Adam (Patai 223-32). According to some, Lilith and two other female demons seduced some of the angels, the "Sons of God," and bore giants (Graves and Patai 101). Assuming the form of the Queen of Sheba, a "black but comely" woman, Lilith attempted to seduce Solomon. Still in the Circe and Lilith 5 of 23 role of a desert queen, she destroyed Job's family. She is a succubus, a vampire, and a strangler, usually with a strand or two of her own hair. She causes nocturnal emissions when men sleep alone, steals semen from the marital bed, and can even force herself on men while they are awake. Lilith is a danger for women as well, especially during virginity, menstruation, and childbirth. She hates human children, attempting to prevent their births through barrenness and miscarriages, and thus earning from Joyce the epithet "patron of abortions" ((Patai 223-32; Joyce 390). When she cannot prevent their birth, Lilith tries to suck children's blood or strangle them. She has been given authority to punish and kill children for the sins of their fathers, and is associated with the flaming sword that guards Eden. If an amulet prevents her from killing a human child, she kills one of her own from spite (Patai 223-32). 3 The Kabalistic book of Zohar calls Lilith "that whore of a woman, the primordial serpent," "a fungus" emerging "out of the dregs of wine," and "End of All Flesh, End of Days" (77). In one description she sounds like the dangerous seductress from the biblical Song of Songs; however, this seductress transforms herself into a warrior, her gender apparently changing: She bedecks herself with all kinds of jewelry like an abhorrent prostitute posing on the corner to seduce men. The fool who approaches her -- she grabs him and kisses him, pours him wine from the dregs, from the venom of vipers. This fool follows her, drinks from the cup of wine, fornicates with her, deviates after her. she removes her decorations and turns into a powerful warrior confronting him. Arrayed in armor of flashing fire, . in his hand a sharp-edged sword drips bitter drops. He kills that fool and flings him into hell.
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