The Onyx Review: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal © 2017 Center for Writing and Speaking 2017, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 9–20 Agnes Scott College The Cannibal Mother: Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass and the Sexual Anxieties of Bluebeard Folktales Taylor Drake Agnes Scott College

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is renowned for its condemnation of Christian fundamentalism and positive portrayal of sexual maturation; yet these themes supposedly do not come into prominence until after the first book, The Golden Compass. However, here I will argue that The Golden Compass contains subtle retellings of “Bluebeard” (ATU 312) and “The Robber Bridegroom” (ATU 955), folktales wherein a young woman finds a room full of the corpses of her husband’s previous wives. Through repurposing elements of these folktales – and recasting the villain as the protagonist’s mother – The Golden Compass presents a strong condemnation of what feminist Elizabeth Spelman calls “somatophobia,” Western philosophy’s hostility to the body that is used to rationalize the subjugation of women. While Pullman’s use of the Bluebeard cycle ultimately reinforces his publicly-stated goals for the series, judging The Golden Compass as a Bluebeard retelling allows for reevaluations of both feminist and Freudian interpretations of the folktales, revealing an alternate interpretive paradigm that re-centers narrative importance on the family and thus exposes the manufactured nature of sexual anxieties in Judeo-Christian society.

s English authoress Angela akin to analyzing it by its prologue Carter once wrote: “I am all for (Waldman). A putting new wine in old bottles; What is left for the first book, then? especially if the pressure of the new wine Although the connection between makes the old bottles explode” (37). Carter’s Pullman’s plucky heroine Lyra Belacqua fairy tale retellings challenge the ideological and the Biblical Eve is not codified until the paradigms of some of the Western world’s second novel, Pullman utilizes retellings of oldest and most-beloved stories—but the Bluebeard cycle, fairy tales in which perhaps she could have gone back further. “Eve is allowed to get away with it,” to Fellow Englishmen Philip Pullman has question the proposed destructiveness of made no secret that the His Dark Materials female curiosity and sexual maturation trilogy is “a retelling of Miltonian (Warner 244). It is not merely the exciting temptation and fall,” meant to “represent the prologue to a series that eventually tackles fall as entirely good,” intending for his new themes of sexual maturity and the dangers of wine to destroy the old bottle entirely religious fundamentalism. Instead, the (Waldman). By returning to the beginning of folkloric context reveals The Golden human life, – and its stories – Pullman seeks Compass as itself a thematic heavyweight, to challenge fundamental notions of albeit more subtly so, and the fruition of maturation and sexuality. By his own hundreds of linked attempts to express and admission, however, most of the books’ ease somatophobic anxieties. Miltonian intertextuality happens “after The The Golden Compass is the quest of 11- Golden Compass ends”—an ending so open year-old orphan Lyra Belacqua to find her that analyzing the novel independently feels friend, Roger, who has been kidnapped by a group known colloquially as the “Gobblers”;

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T. Drake / THE CANNIBAL MOTHER: PHILIP PULMAN’S THE GOLDEN COMPASS AND THE SEXUAL ANXIETIES OF BLUEBEARD FOLKTALES over the course of the novel, this journey poem at the end of Charles Perrault’s “La becomes centered around “Dust,” a Barbe Bleue,” identified as the first literary mysterious element that her father Lord variant, defined this attitude: Asriel wants to study and that the theocratic Curiosity despite its attractions, Magisterium wants to suppress. Comes with the cost of many regrets; “The Gobblers” are the Oblation Board, …And always at too high a cost a government program spearheaded by the (Heiner, “Moral” 17). manipulative but gorgeous Mrs. Coulter, This comes despite Perrault’s own Lyra’s biological mother. Based on research flippant tone, and the additional moral that that Dust begins to accumulate in a person Anyone with a sensible mind once their daemon – a physical …Will easily see that this story manifestation of the soul able to shapeshift Is a tale from past times (Heiner, during prepubescence – finds its permanent “Another Moral” 17). form, the Magisterium has concluded that Perrault also calls Bluebeard’s test Dust is remnants of Original Sin. Thus, the “impossible,” implying that Fatima’s Oblation Board have been tasked to sever, or disobedience was an inevitability (Heiner, “intercise,” the metaphysical tie between “Another Moral” 17). This second moral child and daemon, ultimately at the cost of also concludes by stating that the traditional the child’s life. power dynamics within marriage have Next, for simplicity’s sake, the phrase shifted so that “it is hard to judge which of ‘Bluebeard cycle’ will refer to stories of [the man and woman] is the master,” which ATU tale types 311, 312, and 955; as much too conflicts with the denouncement of folkloric scholarship refers to tale types by female curiosity that most seem to have their most famous variants, 311 and 955 taken away (Heiner, “Another Moral” 17). shall here be referred to as Fitcher’s Birds Still, much of the scholarship and art around and Robber Bridegrooms respectively, while the Bluebeard cycle is entrenched in 312 shall be called Maiden-Killers to avoid misogyny – sometimes even rationalizing confusion with Bluebeard the character. The the first wife’s murder as the result of an heroine of this cycle shall be here Fatima, as unrelated and equally-imaginary crime. bestowed upon her by the Victorian stage Yet even to other feminist scholars, (Kiesel 26). Warner’s earlier praise that the Bluebeard Bluebeard is a hideous man who woos a cycle allows Eve to escape blameless is one young girl with his immense wealth, and a more often heaped upon The Maiden month after their wedding day hands her the Killer’s sister-tales, Fitcher’s Bird and The keys to his castle – demanding before he Robber Bridegroom. As professor Cristina departs, however, that she not enter one Bacchilega posits, however, focusing on the closet door. She does, whereupon she finds forbidden chamber rather than Fatima’s all the bodies of his previous wives hanging disobedience reframes the Maiden-Killer along the walls. Her husband immediately narrative as “a process of initiation which returns and vows to behead her for her requires entering the forbidden chamber,” transgression, but just as he is raising his an acquisition of life-affirming knowledge sword, her brothers arrive to cut him down and a first assertion of autonomy, which is a with their own. paradigm that The Golden Compass falls Vastly more shocking than the violence into within its opening pages (197). of the tale is how many authors and scholars Lyra’s snooping in the Retiring Room cite curiosity as the true villain. A short of Jordan College reveals her caregivers’

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T. Drake / THE CANNIBAL MOTHER: PHILIP PULMAN’S THE GOLDEN COMPASS AND THE SEXUAL ANXIETIES OF BLUEBEARD FOLKTALES attempt to poison her father. Rather than Amber 376). While Freud characterizes the Fatima’s illusions of her marriage destroyed basement as the area of the house where – or, in many cases, her repressed inappropriate feelings are kept hidden, Lyra uneasiness validated – Lyra’s childish, feels these room not as threatening but unquestioning trust in the goodwill of adults “quiet, expectant,” awaiting her exploration is struck a blow. Like Walter Crane’s (Tartar 50; Pullman, Amber 376). Further illustrations of Fatima, key-in-hand, framed cementing the sexual overtones of this scene against a tapestry of the Temptation in Eden, – and its connection to the biblical story – is this scene mirrors what Marina Warner the fact that Malone’s sexual awakening is claims is the “inner structure” of the symbolized by her first kiss in a garden, a Bluebeard cycle (244). Lyra is destined to be kiss which feels like “paradise” and whose “tempted, as Eve was,” and thus, following memory later leads Malone to renouncing Warner’s line of reasoning, the Jordan her covenant (Pullman, Amber 376). Scholars, beholden to the Magisterium, are Before one can explore the newly- God’s agents– strict older men trying to alighted rooms of the house, however, one stamp out those who will arouse Eve’s must question why one has been told not to. dangerous intellectual curiosity (Pullman, The acquisition of this mistrust of adult Amber Spyglass 67). authority in the novel’s opening scene is This “inner structure” can perhaps unquestionably presented as a necessary act; explain why so many echoes of the without Lord Asriel, the trilogy would not Bluebeard cycle have arisen with seemingly exist. Through these cues, regardless of little intention on Pullman’s part. To whether one hears the folkloric echoes, Warner, Fatima is Eve, Bluebeard is God, Pullman primes both protagonist and patron the key the apple, and his dead wives’ to not only question the motives of bodies the knowledge of both good and evil seemingly-benign authority figures, but to (Warner 244). The Freudian symbolism of a dare to enter their forbidden chambers. key going into a lock is also blatant, and this Although the first chapter echoes The imagery of opening doors representing Maiden-Killer, the most salient influence is female sexuality will resurface later in that of The Robber Bridegroom upon Lyra’s story. While listening to former-nun chapter fifteen to the ending of part two. In Mary Malone (the second serpent) describe many ways, Pullman’s use of the Robber her own sexual awakening, Lyra feels “as if framework regresses the novel into she had been handed the key to a great conventional fairy tale tropes. The house she hadn't known was there….and as juxtaposition of such tropes against their she turned the key, she felt other doors Maiden-Killer counterparts, however, strips opening deep in the darkness, and lights the folktales down to their marrow. I am coming on” (Pullman, Amber 376). going to first briefly outline “The Robber That Lyra feels a “great house” inside Bridegroom” and discuss key variances, her opening up is a positive retelling of before summarizing the retelling within The Fatima’s own exploration of her husband’s Golden Compass and analyzing the myriad castle, the doors “opening deep in the consequences of its own divergences, both darkness” mirroring the position of the for its place within the Bluebeard corpus and chamber as not only spatially but for the text, itself. psychologically separate from the rest of the In a standard Robber Bridegroom, a house, a trap door into the hidden bowels of woman is invited to visit her fiancé at his both Bluebeard’s estate and mind (Pullman, home, but by some happenstance arrives

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T. Drake / THE CANNIBAL MOTHER: PHILIP PULMAN’S THE GOLDEN COMPASS AND THE SEXUAL ANXIETIES OF BLUEBEARD FOLKTALES while he is absent, door unlocked. Inside, of Aarne and Thompson’s folktale she finds room after room filled with classification system, The Maiden-Killer’s treasures. When she enters a room a talking subtypes are entitled “The Rescued Girl,” bird has warned her not to, however, she “The Rescued Bride,” and “Rescue by the finds the floor coated in blood. Her beau Brother,” whereas Fitcher’s Bird is simply then arrives home with his henchmen, renamed “Rescue by the Sister” (191-194). dragging another maiden behind him. The Thus, while I posit that The Golden woman watches as the other is killed and Compass is more insightful into the consumed, concealing a severed finger that patriarchal institutions that propagate sexual rolls under the bed where she is hiding. somatophobia, I would not necessarily call it Once they have fallen asleep, the woman any more feminist than the best folktales. slips away. She invites her fiancé to a dinner But before digressing further into party the next day, presents the finger, and theoretical feminist bloviating, let us return has her brothers slay him where he stands. to the text. If we begin when Lyra is The most important psychosexual kidnapped after Lee Scoresby’s balloon divergence is that Fatima’s husband is now crashes, then the text draws closer her suitor; Pullman, however, diverges comparison to Fitcher’s Bird, wherein three further by turning the Robber Bridegroom sisters are kidnapped sequentially by a into the protagonist’s mother. On the wizard, than The Robber Bridegroom. Aside surface, Mrs. Coulter is even more from this, however, Lyra’s early stay with archetypal than the wicked stepmother, The Gobblers has been excluded for calling back to the evil biological mothers irrelevance; we begin instead when she the Brothers Grimms edited out of their enters the novel’s most gruesome chamber. folktales to uphold their romanization of the Rather than Bluebeard departing, Lyra housewife. While some have praised the herself sneaks away from the Oblation stories as critiques of the institution of Board to investigate a “squat, square heterosexual marriage, Mrs. Coulter as the building a little apart from the rest,” her Bluebeard seems a regression to a standard daemon Pantalaimon filling the role of the tale of female competition, in contrast with warning parrot (Pullman, Golden 267). those of female solidarity in many Fitcher’s Ironically, his efforts are undercut by Birds and Robber Bridegrooms. another bird, Serafina Pekkala’s goose “The only relationships between female daemon, who opens the chamber doors at and male characters are based on Lyra’s behest. cannibalism, murder, domestic service, or some combination of them,” as Pauline Greenhill writes, “yet in “Fitcher’s Bird” and “The Robber Bridegroom,” the main female characters get together, conspire, and overthrow their oppressors” (156). In Maiden-Killer tales, the only “good” men are the brothers who save Fatima – despite sometimes also pushing her to marry Bluebeard in the first place. The heroines of Fitcher’s Birds and Robber Bridegrooms, however, do not wait around for male rescuers. Indeed, in Hans-Jörg Uther’s edits

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“In a series of glass cases on shelves postlapsarian encounter is a “dalliance,” the around the walls were all the daemons of the same word used in book two to describe severed children: ghostlike forms of cats, or Satan raping his own daughter, Sin, in a birds, or rats, or other creatures, each union which begot Death (9.1015-1016). If bewildered and frightened and as pale as the Temptation in Eden is the inner structure smoke” (Pullman, Golden 269). The zoo- of the Bluebeard cycle, then the horrors like display of cages recalls the theatrics and inside the bloody chamber would serve to even pride with which Bluebeard seems to reinforce such dire connotations. For exhibit his crimes, hanging his wives’ “Bluebeard,” as child psychologist Bruno bodies along the wall or, as figure one Bettelheim asserts, “is a story about the depicts, arranging their heads into a neatly- dangerous propensities of sex, about its labeled line. strange secrets and close connection with Were this the Fitcher’s Bird Lyra’s violent and destructive emotions” from kidnapping had implied, after discovering which a retreat to the childhood home is the her sister’s bodies, Fatima would then have only reprieve (305). Furthermore, Mrs. reconnected their limbs and miraculously Coulter’s metamorphosis from cannibal revived them. Pullman, however, sadly suitor to murderous mother again regresses subverts this trope, for the intercision is the story back to a tired play of female permanent. Although freed, neither the competition. From what has been described severed daemons nor their children will ever thus far, the Bluebeard cycle elements be whole again. seemingly run counter to Pullman’s stated From subversion, Pullman transitions to goals, his divergences self-defeating. While mere borrowing. While Lyra does not yet the Bluebeard cycle challenges “happily witness an intercision, she secretly observes ever after,” Mrs. Coulter is yet another the Oblation Board explaining the procedure validation of cherchez la femme – right? shortly after her discovery, an allomotif Well, she is – until she explains her borrowed from Mr. Fox tales, wherein motivations which, unlike the evil Fatima spies her lover digging her a grave. mother/stepmother archetype, are born not Next, Mrs. Bluebeard herself appears and from envy but from a fear of and desire to immediately arranges the dinner. Instead of suppress blooming sexualities. As she presenting the severed finger to a explains to Lyra: “at the age we call scandalized crowd, Lyra and Mrs. Coulter puberty….daemons bring out all sort of fight over ownership of the Alethiometer, an troublesome thoughts and feelings, and equivalence to the severed finger because that’s what lets Dust in” (Pullman, Golden each reveals truths that the maiden must 294). While Pullman himself claims Dust is translate for her listeners. Finally, the a metaphor for consciousness, the text itself Oblation Board’s headquarters reaches the suggest a thoroughly sexual connection end so many Robber Bridegrooms and their betwixt Dust and daemons (Kean). Aside castles do: engulfed in flames. from the association of Dust and puberty’s How can The Golden Compass “troublesome feelings,” Lord Asriel outright reconcile its Bluebeard cycle elements with compares the severing of a daemon to its desire to revise the Miltonian fall? castration – “Something like [intercision] Paradise Lost is extremely pellucid in its had happened before. Do you know what the condemnation of sexuality—not only do word castration means?” (Pullman, Golden Adam and Eve “burn” with lust after 294; 384). As critics like Maude Hines have consuming the apple, but their first also pointed out, the taboo against touching

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T. Drake / THE CANNIBAL MOTHER: PHILIP PULMAN’S THE GOLDEN COMPASS AND THE SEXUAL ANXIETIES OF BLUEBEARD FOLKTALES another’s daemon suggests them not only as importantly animals, the ‘natural’ paired a manifestation of the soul, but the sexual with the “despised body” to support men’s organ (Tso 98). The first strong textual clue intellectual and/or moral superiority (Adams of the latent sexuality of daemons comes, and Donovan 2). Women are closer to and however, through Mrs. Coulter’s attempts to thus subjects of nature with its ‘baser’ and gender Lyra. Bettelheim’s assertion that ‘sinful’ drives, while men can overcome “since our mothers— or nurses—were our nature through either holiness or rationality. earliest educators, it is likely that they first Although cultural consensus on how keenly tabooed sex in some fashion” is proven true women feel sexual desire has been when Mrs. Coulter forces Pan to avert his extremely fluid over the course of Western eyes from a bathing Lyra for the first time, history, the need to control and suppress enforcing dichotomous gender between a female sexuality has remained a constant. girl and her own soul (282). From Biblical times, when Jewish women While less overtly sexual, the Jordan were forced to cover all but their eyes on the scholars also heavily shape Lyra’s early rare occasions they were allowed out of the conception of gender. The male exclusivity house, to contemporary debates over the of the Retiring Room extends down to the legal right of European Muslim women to maid staff, and Lyra’s initial attitude don full-face veils, female sexuality and towards Mrs. Coulter confirms that the agency have been politicized ever since Eve male-dominated Jordan degrades female bit into the apple (Yalom 14). What is a girl academia. “Poor things,” Lyra thinks of the meant to think, then, when she reads a story female Scholars. “They could never be taken that seems to confirm the destructiveness of more seriously than animals dressed up and marriage and sex– and, moreover, when she acting a play” (Pullman, Golden 76). The then sees echoes of this theme within passing of stewardship from the college to Pullman’s text? Mrs. Coulter is justified as Lyra needing First, regardless of whatever criticism “female guidance” through the transition one may have of His Dark Materials, the from young to young woman (Pullman, principal character of The Golden Compass Golden 79). Thus, the Bluebeards of The is clearly Lyra. This is important because, Golden Compass are not those who commit by contrast, Fatima’s narrative prominence the most violence, but those who invest the in Maiden-Killers is a mere façade. “While most effort into gendering Lyra as female – the wife may seem to be the “moral center” a construct centered on what she is of Bluebeard tales,” admits Maria Tartar, forbidden to do, where is she forbidden to “she is in some ways the protagonist only by go. default,” something which is underscored by The concept of somatophobia is best the namelessness of wives across most illustrated by the words of French writer variants (48). Tartar, in fact, claims that the Annie Ernaux in her 1993 Journal du wife did not receive a name in print until dehors: “Go on, go back home! The man 1910, 213 years after Perrault (40). The said that to the dog, head down, grazing the ATU system’s central motif for The Maiden ground, guilty. The thousand-year-old Killer defines Fatima by her dependence on phrase for children, women and dogs” others, a passive subject to be rescued rather [translation mine] (69). Somatophobia, as than an active subject in the story. At best, coined by Elizabeth Spelman, denotes she is the vehicle through which the Western philosophy’s equation of adult audience gets to indulge the story’s Gothic women not just with children but, more attractions, and at worst, she is simply a

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T. Drake / THE CANNIBAL MOTHER: PHILIP PULMAN’S THE GOLDEN COMPASS AND THE SEXUAL ANXIETIES OF BLUEBEARD FOLKTALES surrogate princess, the brother-hero’s reward adulteress, even ludicrously proposing that at the end of his journey. A nameless the chamber is simply a hallucination based simulacrum of Eve and Pandora, it is little on a few minor narrative inconsistencies surprise then that if given the chance, “most (302). Many different facets of relational readers would elect to enter the taboo anxiety can be expressed through the regions of Bluebeard’s thoughts” (Tartar Bluebeard cycle: the anxiety of passing over 50). legal guardianship of a daughter; the natural “Just whose story, then, is it?” Tartar mistrust of a sibling’s suitor; the fear of sex; asks (53). To which I would reply, the the unease of a shifting family dynamic. family’s. Even in Maiden-Killers told Thusly, different elements of the Bluebeard through Fatima’s eyes, her family will often cycle dramatize not only the child listener’s play major roles, from her parents’ anxieties about relationships and sex, but the negotiation of the marriage, the brothers’ entire family’s. After all, as the Librarian of rescue, to her sisters’ accompaniment to the Jordan College says, “The duty of the old is new martial home. These roles are not to be anxious on behalf of the young” always positive, for as Corrie Kiesel notes, (Pullman, Golden 42). As with blame, the some retellings “mock the notion that anxieties that the folktales articulate need marital blame could be confined to husband not be confined to the married couple. and wife, exploding the circle…to the Overall, the Bluebeard cycle endorses couple’s extended family and beyond” (iii). “a regressive move back to the household of Fatima’s courtship is often subject to the heroine’s childhood” (Tartar 58). Not familial pressures, dramatized in one only is the new martial home rife with Victorian play by Fatima’s mother danger, but the instrument with which concealing letters from her daughter’s lover Fatima calls for help often comes from her in order to facilitate the more financially- childhood home, be it a silver whistle from advantageous marriage to Bluebeard (Kiesel her brothers, a trio of doves from her 32). Fatima is still rarely characterized mother, or the snake with which Fatima positively, however: many tales greatly shared her mother’s womb. Although the emphasize her beauty, while her curious and His Dark Materials trilogy has been accused rebellious spirit is vilified. Although Lyra is of promoting an overall “conservative view beholden to many different adult authority of adult authority” that “does not deny the figures, she exerts an incredible amount of need for nurture grounded in a mature will throughout the novel, and is recognized wisdom,” said wisdom is found within a far more for her skill with the Alethiometer host of surrogate parents for, in a bold and her storytelling abilities than her subversion of the Freudian family romance, physical appearance and alignment with Lyra’s biological parents match their high traditional femininity. social standings only with their body counts The salient roles of the family have (Rutledge 119-120). Still, a retelling of massive ramifications for Freudian readings Miltonian temptation requires a break from of the Bluebeard cycle—which, in turn, the god-parent, and the transfer of trust and highlights the genius of their inclusion reliance from said god-parent to the self and within The Golden Compass. While the spouse, so how does Pullman reconcile Fatima’s ordeal confirms a child’s these diametrically-opposed themes? suspicions that “adults have terrible sexual He does so, paradoxically, by regressing secrets,” Bettelheim misses the larger further. Even remaining within Fatima’s picture in his rush to paint her as an perspective, the kind of anxiety her story

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T. Drake / THE CANNIBAL MOTHER: PHILIP PULMAN’S THE GOLDEN COMPASS AND THE SEXUAL ANXIETIES OF BLUEBEARD FOLKTALES latently expresses changes or contradicts realism…in psychological terms” (‘Achuka itself from tale type to tale type. In many Interview’); like a true folkloric text, variants, including Perrault’s, the obedience Pullman utilizes fantasy to “embody” test takes place a month after the wedding, psychological phenomena. While Pullman long after the couple would have pulls apart Milton’s chef-d'œuvre, however, consummated their relationship. Robber every facet of the Bluebeard cycle grounds Bridegrooms and Fitcher’s Birds, by itself in the emotional truth of what comparison, generally place the monstrous Greenhill calls “the false payoff” of discovery before or on the wedding night marriage – that the transfer from the father’s itself – in the latter type, Bluebeard often control to the husband’s does not yield any will not declare his intent to marry Fatima more autonomy within a patriarchal system until after she has discovered her dead (150). As recently as 1997, wives were sisters. The Golden Compass winds this falling behind their husbands in surveys of clock even further back by following its marital satisfaction and all measures of heroine before the onset of sexuality mental health, proving that even today, entirely. “happily ever after” is anything but As Warner asserts, the specification of guaranteed (Yalom 394). one month after the wedding suggests Dramatically, however, not all tales are Fatima’s fear is not of the loss of her equal in this regard. If I had to create a virginity, but of the consequences of said spectrum of sexual somatophobia within the loss (260-265). The elapsed time may Bluebeard cycle, Maiden-Killers would represent the wife’s discovery of her missed stand on one far end, while on the other period, the chamber a vision not of her fate stands Robber Bridegrooms and, further for infidelity but for being with child, as along, Fitcher’s Birds. In Maiden-Killers, delivery was one of the principal causes of the inclusion of the deflowered girl is death for both children and women before diluted by a long dramatis personae that the nineteenth century (Warner 263). forces the audience to step away from Another, more modern model for Fatima’s subjectivity. Fitcher’s Birds and Maiden-Killers exists too, that of “a Robber Bridegroom, one the other hand, particularly potent kind of marriage present the nerves at their most-taxed and counseling” for dealing with an unbalance of through those eyes most subject to sex’s first sexual experience between partners (Tartar irreversible damage, that loss of virginity. 6). This model was self-administered by The latter type is rated higher because artist Francoise Gilot in her memoir Life its tales better narratively justify Fatima’s with Picasso; upon entering one of her old anxiety, not only by the discovery of the lover’s houses, Gilot envisions “that if I chamber before the wedding, but by having looked into a closet, I would find half a the Bluebeard often kidnap her outright. As dozen ex-wives hanging by their necks” Pauline Greenhill writes, Fitcher’s Birds (152-153). As Tartar writes, with the paint heterosexual relationships as “clearly Bluebeard cycle Gilot “found a tool for fraught with danger and evil from their thinking through and understanding the onset” which grounds the emotional truths powerful emotions evoked by her husband’s by recalling the centuries in which women past,” plainly demonstrating the emotional lacked choice in whom they were to marry, truth of this alternative paradigm (66). and strengthens the Freudian reading by Pullman himself has declared that the presenting the consummation of marriage as His Dark Materials trilogy is “stark closer to rape (150). If not a kidnapper,

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T. Drake / THE CANNIBAL MOTHER: PHILIP PULMAN’S THE GOLDEN COMPASS AND THE SEXUAL ANXIETIES OF BLUEBEARD FOLKTALES however, her husband’s bluebeard still persecution for suspicions of witchcraft. denotes a “priapic mode”, as sexual as it is Deuteronomy also commanded that women hideous (Warner 242). who were determined to not be virgins upon Where does this leave The Golden their wedding nights should be stoned by the Compass? men in their villages (Yalom 4). By transforming the Bluebeard from a Mrs. Coulter’s seductive beauty, spouse to a parent, the latent fears are multiple affairs, and bastard children are not transformed from one of sexuality to one of simply tired dressings of a misogynistic another’s sexual development, and trope, but an exaggeration of the hypocrisy transferred from the child audience to the of parents who try to shove fear and shame parent storyteller – from the victim Lyra to down the throats of children about the perpetrator Mrs. Coulter. The horrific selfsame feelings that created them. While consequences of the intercision, however, most children’s anxieties, admittedly, do not fall solely upon the affected child. While overtly manifest as fear their spouses may Lord Asriel describes intercised adults as kill them, or of themselves becoming “corpse”-like, corpses are precisely what enervated zombies, the effects of leaving become of intercised children (Pullman, children to wonder about adults’ dark sexual Golden 385). Although classing intercised secrets are still felt in the modern era—most persons as zombies may seem a hyperbole, obviously, the phenomena of abstinence- in truth sexual somtophobia– and, by only or no formal sexual education resulting extension, fear of female self-knowledge – in higher teenage pregnancy rates than a has had deadly consequences for both sexes, comprehensive one (Kohler et al.). Sexual yet primarily for women. shame can not only create problems later in Sheltered from sexual self-knowledge life, but inhibit the inflicted individual from and barred from legal recourse, many seeking treatment. The reason Bluebeard has women throughout history were taught to a closet full of murdered women is not simply accept any of their husband’s orders, because they failed an obedience test, but in and out of the bedchamber, and regardless because their parents put them there. of how abusive. Christian moral philosophy Mrs. Coulter is herself, however, and the masculinization of midwifery in 19th hamstrung by the limitations of her gender century Britain demanded that during within a patriarchal society, pressured to use delivery, the infant’s life be prioritized over her sexuality to achieve any sort of power. If the mother’s so that it could be baptized – it Lyra is Pullman’s Eve, her mother– her past could still be saved, unlike the mother, who littered with extramarital affairs, one in was so tainted with the sin of Eve that she which her own murderous husband was was relatively not worth the effort (Thomas killed– is strikingly close to Bettelheim’s 130; Warner 263). This principle did not Fatima. She is as much an active agent as simply apply to strained vaginal births; in an she is a victim of the Magisterium, without era without antiseptics or antibiotics, which there would be no somatophobic cesarean sections were still performed to a rhetoric for her to espouse. The Magisterium 100% mortality rate (Warner 263). As the is a “Big Bluebeard” Adorno and Bible stipulated the pain of childbirth as Horkheimer warn of in Dialectic of punishment for the Fall, midwives, whose Enlightenment (282). Unsatisfied with duties included not only medical but simply lording over the private home, the emotional relief in the bedchamber faced Magisterium’s thirst for control culminates legal limitations and, most famously, in the kidnapping and murder of dozens of

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T. Drake / THE CANNIBAL MOTHER: PHILIP PULMAN’S THE GOLDEN COMPASS AND THE SEXUAL ANXIETIES OF BLUEBEARD FOLKTALES children, the colloquial suspicion of acting upon the protagonist, the common cannibalism echoing the real cannibalism of focus on the wife’s transgression posits her many villains in the Bluebeard cycle. As curiosity and acquisition of sexual Adorno and Horkheimer write, “A Big knowledge as the true villains. Even in Bluebeard…will start a war against an entire Robber Bridegroom stories, the one who nation, against the world,” the “world” in foreshadows the destructive potential of sex this context being the natural one (282). is often a bird, if not an entire forest of them, Bluebeard is himself a “man against suggesting that a fear of sex is innate and nature,” both for his unnatural appearance natural. Through utilizing Bluebeard and for his destruction of life (Warner 242). paradigms, however, Pullman raises the That the physical manifestation of the stakes of the failure to gain such knowledge, Magisterium’s sexual somatophobia, the condemning not partners but parents and intercision, is not simply an abhorrent crime larger authoritative power structures as the but a perversion of nature is made explicit in sole manufactures of sexual anxieties. the text: “A human being with no daemon Lyra’s grand destiny – to be tempted was like someone without a and fall – cannot be guided by any elder, but face…something unnatural and uncanny that by her own inquisitiveness and agency. As belonged to the world of night-ghasts, not the witch Serafina Pekkala says, “If she's the waking world of sense” (Pullman, told what she must do, it will all fail; death Golden 224). Were it not for the room of will sweep through all the worlds; it will be severed daemons, it would be startlingly the triumph of despair, forever” (Pullman, easy, then, to construe Mrs. Coulter’s Golden 320). Instead of being asked to motivations as sympathetic to Lyra, repress both her sexuality and her curiosity, especially when she, seemingly the fate of fate itself rests on Lyra and paradoxically, saves Lyra from the Pantalaimon facing the forbidden door and intercision. asking, “What if growing up is good?” While Bluebeard cycle stories present sexual somatophobia as an external force

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and Its Chinese Translation, University of Birmingham, 2010. Uther, Hans-Jörg. The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. Vol. 1, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2004. Waldman, Katy. “A Conversation With His Dark Materials Author Philip Pullman (and His Daemon).” Slate Magazine, Slate, 5 Nov. 2015, www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015 /11/philip_pullman_interview_the_gold en_compass_author_on_young_adult_li terature.html. Accessed 22 Feb. 2017. Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: on Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. Noonday Press/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Yalom, Marilyn. A History of the Wife. Pandora, 2004.

Submitted 09/16/2017 Accepted with revisions 10/17/2017 Accepted 10/31/2017

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