The Portrait of a Psyche: Women's Underworld Journeys in Four Modern American Novels

Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1998 The orP trait of a Psyche: Women's Underworld Journeys in Four Modern American Novels. Kristen Sifert Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Sifert, Kristen, "The orP trait of a Psyche: Women's Underworld Journeys in Four Modern American Novels." (1998). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 6867. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/6867 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. 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THE PORTRAIT OF A PSYCHE: WOMEN'S UNDERWORLD JOURNEYS IN FOUR MODERN AMERICAN NOVELS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Kristen Sifert B .A., Thomas More College, 1990 M.E., University of Dallas, 1994 December 1998 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9922116 UMI Microform 9922116 Copyright 1999, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ac know 1 edgement s I am pleased to acknowledge the dedication and generosity of my director, Professor Bainard Cowan, and his wife Christine, who led me to the underworld of this dissertation and saw it through to my emergence. I would like to thank my committee members for their interest in this project and their helpful commentary: Dr. Lori Badie of the Department of Music; Frey Professor Peggy Whitman Prenshaw, Alumni Professor John May and Associate Professor Richard Moreland of the Department of English. I am grateful to Louisiana State University and the Department of English for supporting my studies with a teaching assistantship. For reading and commenting on the Henry James chapter, I would like to thank Bob Beuka and Professor Gale Carrithers. Those who taught me at Thomas More College and the University of Dallas, particularly Drs. Glenn and Virginia Arbery, Drs. Donald and Louise Cowan, Dr. Mary Mumbach, and Dr. Peter Sampo, persistently encouraged my work; I continued to learn from each of them as I wrote this dissertation. Over the years given to this work, I enjoyed the friendship of those who assisted me in more ways than I can mention: Beverly Arthur, Seana Baughman, Ewenet Belaineh, Mary Bonifield, Sheila and Greg Borse, Paul Connell, Van Decoteau, Eamon Halpin, Eileen Balajadia Janaro, ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. John Kelly, Christopher Kisling, Joel Manuel, Gregory Marks and Kathleen Kelly Marks, Dotty and Mike McCaughey, Peter O'Connor, John Sponseller, Tom Sponseller, Kale Zelden, Judy and Michael Zelden. I would like to thank especially Vicki Murray for her gracious assistance with the final version. Finally, I am grateful for the abiding support of my parents, Alexandra and Lawrence Sifert, and my siblings: Jennifer and Tim Brown, Timothy and Lisa Sifert, Amy Kate and Peter Powers, Rosemary, Erin, Sarah, Maria, Teddy, Anthony and Maisie. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Preface Inspired by James Hillman's proposal of the Psyche myth as a revisionary paradigm for twentieth-century analytical psychology, this study began as a tracing of Psyche's path through four modern American novels: Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, Caroline Gordon's The Women on the Porch, William Faulkner's Light in August, and Toni Morrison's Beloved. As the parallels and distinctions between the Greek myth and the American novels emerged, the significant segment of Psyche's elaborate plot came to be seen in the underworld descent enacted by Isabel Archer, Catherine Chapman and Sethe, evaded by Lena Grove. Another image, absent from the myth, persisted in the novels: the portrait of a lady, with the exception, again, of Lena Grove. Despite the resistance to the underworld, which is associated with suffering, sin, darkness, dirt and death, Psyche's descent is necessary for the progression from separation to wholeness. Lena is exempt from the underworld descent because, even while she evokes Psyche's longing for wholeness, she already embodies that wholeness from the beginning of the novel to the end. Yet that ultimate wholeness remains a distant goal toward which the other American protagonists proceed from amidst their m o d e m world of divisions and fragmentation. iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The portrait of a lady frames the resistance to the underworld in terms of an attractive yet rather thin idea of the lady. It also sharpens the novelists' underworldly focus upon emergence in beauty, a task more immediate than ascending in wholeness. Portrait-like, Psyche's physical beauty attracts the attention of mankind, yet it must be deepened through the underworld descent. Psyche emerges from the underworld with a box of beauty, yet for the American women, this deeper beauty is portrayed in terms of gesture and movement that can be more rendered more aptly in a novel than in a picture. While Lena Grove belies the static frame of the portrait by defining herself in the fullness and compelling momentum of a "lady travelling, " the other women elaborate the ordeal through which they emerge in beauty. v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Acknowledgements....................................... ii Preface................................................ iv Abstract.............................................. vii Introduction............................................ 1 Chapter I. Henry James's The Portrait of a Ladv: Girlish Goodness and the Depth of Money........................23 The Underworldly Gift.............................25 Critical Emphasis on Money........................29 Girlish Goodness and the Longing for Darkness 38 Awakening to the Underworld.......................48 Returning to the Underworld.......................61 The Final Portrait of a Lady......................64 Chapter II. Caroline Gordon's The Women on the Porch: The Double Pattern and Emerging in Beauty..................70 The Double Pattern................................ 75 Catherine's Descent............................... 79 Portraits of a Lady...............................94 Epic and the Feminine............................101 Emerging in Beauty............................... 109 Chapter III. William Faulkner's Light in August: The Divided Psyche and the Longing for Darkness...........124 Division and the Wholeness of Story..............126 The Psyche Urge ................................ 13 5 Money and the Descent............................147 Light in August and the Longing for Darkness 169 Chapter IV. Toni Morrison's Beloved: Incarnation of the Underworld............................................ 183 Enslavement and Maternity........................190 Purity and the Portrait of a Lady................196 Stamp Paid and the Delusion of Debtlessness..... 211 Psychological Passage: The Underworldly Beloved. .219 Sethe and Beloved: Two Women on the

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