The Mythological Function of Female Adolescent Individuation Narratives As Exemplified
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The Mythological Function of Female Adolescent Individuation Narratives as Exemplified by Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga and Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy Heidi A. Hendricks A Thesis in the Field of English Literature for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University March 2016 Copyright 2015/2016 Heidi A. Hendricks Abstract Beloved and bemoaned, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga and Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games trilogy permeated and persist in our cultural conversations and imaginations. What about these particular narratives enthrall and outrage contemporary audiences transcending age, gender, class, and mores, and what does the pandemic reactivity to their teenaged heroines suggest about American society in this moment in time? Thorough analysis of the narrative structure, protagonists, and core conflicts found in the Twilight saga and the Hunger Games trilogy in the context of psychological, historical, and cultural studies scholarship—specifically in relationship to the work of comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell and psychologists C. G. Jung and John Weir Perry—reveals how each narrative functions mythologically. By evoking affect-images, archetypal representations of unconscious energies and information, each narrative leans against the taboos and longings of individual psyches while reflecting the condition and dilemmas of its generative social order’s collective unconscious. From the onset of modernity, affect-images of adolescent girls in Western cultural productions have hosted our preconscious conflicts and disowned anxieties about shifting relational power dynamics—in particular, the changing roles of race, class, sex and gender in defining individual identity and the social order. By functioning mythologically, current heroic affect-images, such as Twilight’s Bella Swan and the Hunger Games’s Katniss Everdeen, reflect core anxieties about modernity’s redefinition of the individual and the female, and illustrate the conflict between biological embodiment and modernity’s release of the individual from pre-determined notions of identity and destiny. Author Biography A graduate of Berklee College of Music’s Music Production and Engineering program, Heidi A. Hendricks also studied music theory, English literature, anthropology, and political science at The Ohio State University and undertook pre-collegiate studio art studies at The Columbus College of Art and Design. As an artist who fashions stories from words, sounds, images, and experience, and as an investigator intrigued by the intricacies of interconnectivity, Ms. Hendricks believes that stories feed the human imagination, fuel empathy, and create our possibilities. Storytelling interpenetrates and binds her many fascinations and aspirations (as well as her eclectic professional history) into a unified whole. In 2016, Ms. Hendricks looks forward to finalizing the production of a ‘new world’ music recording, co-hosting a podcast of conversations between artists from different disciplines about the typically unseen aspects of art-making, exploring fresh research opportunities, and writing the last word of her first novel for children. Dedication For David (1947 - 2016), who sang the songs of the universe. For Joe (1904 - 1987), who taught new ways of thinking about listening to them. Acknowledgements Das Ewig-Weibliche, / Zieht uns hinan “The eternal feminine / Draws us on.” —Goethe, Faust A very special thank you to my mother—whose love of diagramming sentences informed how and what she taught me about thinking and writing—for explaining to her six-year-old daughter that the real Santa is anyone who expresses the spirit of giving; also to my father, for taking said six year old to see The Empire Strikes Back, which set her pondering the mechanics of stories. Thirty-four years of fascination with these ideas culminate in this thesis. Many thanks to Talaya Delaney for her insightful, enthusiastic support of this project and my writing. My gratitude to John R. Stilgoe and Sue Weaver Schopf for designing extraordinary courses, each taught in an utterly singular fashion, that have afforded me so many wonderful adventures chasing strange rabbits down oddly-shaped holes. (To John, again, as the director of this thesis, for helping me find my way back out of said holes. As author, observer, teacher, and connoisseur of dictionaries, you inspire.) My on-going appreciation for the Watertown Free Public Library, most especially its knowledgable and kind staff of Young Adult and reference librarians. Having access to the astounding resource that is the Harvard Library system astonishes me daily; special thanks to my Harvard Library Collections Care, Patron Services, and Human Resources colleagues for generously supporting the extended absence that made the completion of this project possible, and for cheering me to its end; and my particular gratitude on this occasion for the insight, thought, and learning chronicled in word by Crista DeLuzio, John Perry Weir, Carl Gustav Jung, and Joseph Campbell. My enduring appreciation and esteem for the teachings of Arlene Gregory, who challenged and pushed me in all of the right ways, at the right time to develop the fortitude and skill to write; for many discussions of art, life, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer shared with Claudia Ravaschiere, and for her having entrusted me with Ben, who introduced me to Harry Potter; for the friendship, support, continued patience with my cloisters and/or lack of correspondence lent to me by Matt Boynton, Jeff Kellam, Kristen Manter, Liza Meyers, Alice Ratterree, Melissa Schoenack, Sarah Sharp, and the motley host of musicians awaiting my next move in the completion of their recording. Inexpressible thanks to Brett Hunter for thirty years of idea-hatching, soul- sustaining conversations—and for joining Sybil Watkins Geddes in spooling the thread for me throughout this labyrinth; to Caroline, for holding the light and showing me where to look when I cannot find my way; and to Takaaki, for knowing words limit and fail, yet willingly living with and whole-heartedly loving a writer. Table of Contents Author Biography....................................................................................................................iv Dedication................................................................................................................................v Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................vi-vii I. Introduction....................................................................................................................1 II. Narrative and the Numinous: the Spiritual Problem of Modern Man and the Quest for Modern Mythology....................................................................................................6 III. Projections of the Unconscious: Archetypes, Affect Images, and the Mythological Function of Art.............................................................................................................27 Figure 1................................................................................................................41 IV. The Monomyth and Adolescence: The Emergence (and Disappearance) of the Affect- Image of the Adolescent Girl and English Literature’s Young Adult Heroine...............49 Where She Begins: Once Upon a Time in the Eighteenth-Century....................56 Her Mid-Nineteenth Century Transition: Victorianism, Romanticism, and the Coming of (the Gilded) Age Novel.........................................................70 V. The Monomyth and Adolescence: the Twentieth-Century Scientific Encapsulation of the Adolescent Girl in Crisis and the Return (and Rise) of the Young Adult Heroine Affect-Image....................................................................................................93 VI. Bella Swan: Resolving the Unbearable Anxiety of Being...........................................132 Separation.........................................................................................................137 Initiation...........................................................................................................150 Return................................................................................................................161 VII. Katniss Everdeen: The Girl Who Lived (Despite Never Having Been Meant to Be).....173 Separation..........................................................................................................179 Initiation...........................................................................................................185 Return...............................................................................................................205 VIII. Conclusion..................................................................................................................216 Bibliography..........................................................................................................................221 1 Chapter I Introduction Given the number of narratives spanning media and genres competing for the easily distractible attention of twenty-first-century Americans, it seems remarkable that any one achieves, let alone sustains, pervasive cultural notoriety. Thus the commonalities shared by two of the most ubiquitous narratives to have emerged in the last decade seem all the more uncanny. Both the Twilight saga and the Hunger Games trilogy originated