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Volume 17 Number 2 Article 4 Winter 12-15-1990 The Imposition of Structure: Archetypes in the Fafhrd and Mouser Series Bruce Byfield Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Byfield, Bruce (1990) "The Imposition of Structure: Archetypes in the Fafhrd and Mouser Series," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 17 : No. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Analyzes the development of stories in Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series, under the influence of Jung’s and Campbell’s theories of archetypes, anima, and monomyth. Notes a maturation of he characters and more significant women characters. Additional Keywords Anima in Fritz Leiber; Jungian analysis of Fritz Leiber; Leiber, Fritz. The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series—Characters—Women; Leiber, Fritz. The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series—Psychological aspects; Leiber, Fritz. The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series—Sources; Monomyth in the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss2/4 Page 22 Issue 64 - (JUinrcR 1990 CDyTHLORe "Hhe Irnpostellon o f ScRocroRe AiRdhcrypc8 fin the FbFhRd and GDouscr S crJcs B rucc B y Reid he Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories have been impor­ A few stories, like "The Lotus Eaters," are even straight T tant to Fritz Leiber from the start of his career. biography with a fantasy element tacked on, although Invented by Harry Otto Fischer in a letter to Leiber in these stories are not nearly as polished as similar works September 1934, the characters are heroic versions of the Leiber would do in the Sixties, such as "The Button two correspondents; Fischer is survived by a grandchild Molder." named Grayson, while, in the Forties, Leiber's family As Leiber starts to rely on Jungian thought, he uses it called him "Fafhrd ." Both men used the characters in their to trace the origins of his own symbolism of the Female. attempts to publish, but, since only Leiber had the deter­ An example of this tendency is the framing device of mination to become a professional writer, the series is "Gonna Roll the Bones," in which the protagonist's Wife almost entirely his. In the entire seven book series, only a and Mother are identified only by their relations to him, few thousand words of 'The Lords of Quarmall" are and are versions of Leiber's wife JonQuil and his mother Fischer's, and they are mostly descriptive. Initially, the Virginia. Most of this self analysis, however, takes place in stories were episodic, and Leiber tended to write from the the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series. Mouser's viewpoint, probably, as his son suggests in "Fritz Leiber and Eyes," because writing from Fafhrd's would At first, Leiber approaches the origins of his symbolism have been too personal for comfort. It is not until the late indirectly through the Gray Mouser. In the 1962 story 'The Sixties, when Leiber arranged the series for paperback Unholy Grail," Leiber tells the earliest story of the Mouser, release, that the personal element began to dominate the an apprentice magician whose teacher is persecuted by the series. Deciding on the stories' order, and adding stories local baron. Both the baron and the master magician seem to fill in gaps in the chronology, Leiber was disturbed by dominated by the memory of the baron's savage wife. Even the realization that women played only minor roles in the in death, she intimidates the baron, and a brief affair with stories. To explain the fact, he turned to Jungian theory, her appalled the magician so much that he became a hermit arresting his character's maturation in late adolescence in and renounced violence. Believing his daughter Ivrian to new stories about their early lives. The process took be the magician's, the baron murders him. In response, the several years, but Leiber not only managed to rationalize Mouser forsakes his tutor's teachings and kills the baron the episodic and womanless Quality of the earlier stories, with black magic, using I vrian's resemblance to her mother but also to give the series a new direction as he chronicled as a conduit for the spell. In doing so, he becomes as Anima- his heroes' long delayed maturation in the stories written dominated as the baron and the magician. He flees to the after 1970, using Joseph Campbell's extensions of Jungian city with Ivrian, who becomes the symbol of his lost ideas as his guide. innocence. In later stories, his longing for his innocent past is suggested by his interest in slim, boyish women who When Donald Wollheim commissioned the Fafhrd and resemble the adolescent Ivrian. Mouser series for Ace in 1966, Leiber had recently become a confirmed Jungian. A three year struggle with Leiber takes longer to approach the Anima through alcoholism in the mid-Fifties had left him with a habit of Fafhrd. In 1960, the idea that Fafhrd has some unresolved introspection and, when he returned to writing, eager to feelings is intimated when he pairs off with the Mother make up for lost time, with an extreme consciousness of aspect of the Triple Goddess in "When the Sea King's style. As these traits were making their marks on Leiber's Away." Similarly, in the 1965 story "Stardock," in which fiction, R. F. C. Hull was gradually publishing the English the heroes climb the peak on which Fafhrd's father died in translation of Carl Jung's The Collected Works. Jung's the hopes of treasure and supernatural lovers, there is a account of the Anima, the female part of a man's mind, and passing suggestion of an Oedipal conflict. Halfway in the the Shadow, the unacknowledged self, confirmed Leiber climb, Fafhrd explains that he wants to continue to '"beat in the symbolism that he had always tended towards. By out my father,'" and refers to the peak as feminine, adding the early Sixties, Leiber's work started to contain freQuent that he could not stop climbing "'any more than you could references to Jungian theory. At the same time, he started stop after touching half of a woman'" (56). Nothing more dealing directly with his personal problems: with his is said about this motive, but the comment suggests that relation with his father in "237 Talking Statues, Etc.," with Fafhrd wishes to out-do his father by conQuering the his alcoholism in "Damnation Morning," and with his female figure that his father could not. increasingly troubled marriage in "The Secret Songs." It is another four years before Fafhrd's Anima is Increasingly, he wrote in the first person, often using detailed in 'The Snow Women" and "111 Met in protagonists who are thinly disguised versions of himself. Lankhmar," stories written to complement "The Unholy CDyTHLORe Issue 6 4 - (JUinccR 1 9 9 0 Page 23 Grail" as Leiber arranged the series for paperback Despite this warning that civilization is as corrupt as the publication. "The Snow Women" is the earliest story of Snow Clan, he agrees. Awaiting their departure, he has his Fafhrd, "111 Met in Lankhmar" the story of how the heroes decision confirmed by a dream in which he cannot hear his met. Justin Leiber writes that Virginia Leiber appears as dead father Nalgron giving advice; awakening, he realizes Fafhrd's mother Mor and his first lover Mara, and JonQuil that he can no longer live by asking what Nalgron would Leiber as Vlana. The women's names summarize the do, but must strike outon his own. As a result, when Vellix, outlook: "Mor" is a Danish diminutive for "Mother," and a rival for Vlana who has paternal feelings for Fafhrd, "Mara" is "nightmare" in several Germanic languages. urges that he try to become clan chieftain, then meet civilization on his own terms, Fafhrd rejects the idea. In a "The Snow Women" is set at a trading fair at Cold complex climax, he renounces Mor and Mara, breaks a Comer, where the nomadic Snow Clan gathers to trade taboo as he leaves, and sees all his older male rivals dead, with southerners. The Snow Clan appears to be passing including Vellix. Having broken a taboo and lived (as his from absolute matriarchy under the influence of the more father did not), and having killed a father figure, Fafhrd civilized south, and the women resent the men's seems to have resolved his Oedipal conflict. Babbling ex­ accumulation of power. Their resentment takes the form citedly and hugging Vlana as they sleigh south, he also of a distrust of their men's fascination with the south and seems to have freed his Anima from its domination by the a hatred of the burlesQue show that accompanies the Mother.

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