Tracing Arachne’s Web Copyright 2001 by Kristin M. Mapel Bloomberg. This work is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. You are free to electronically copy, distribute, and transmit this work if you attribute authorship. However, all printing rights are reserved by the University Press of Florida (http://www.upf.com). Please contact UPF for informa- tion about how to obtain copies of the work for print distribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the University Press of Florida. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights. Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola Tracing Arachne’s Web Myth and Feminist Fiction Kristin M. Mapel Bloomberg * University Press of Florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers Copyright 2001 by Kristin M. Mapel Bloomberg Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper All rights reserved 06 05 04 03 02 01 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bloomberg, Kristin M. Mapel, 1969– Tracing Arachne’s web: myth and feminist fiction / Kristin M. Mapel Bloomberg. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8130-2434-X (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Feminist fiction, American—History and criticism. 2. American fiction—Women authors—History and criticism. 3. Feminism and literature—United States—History. 4. Women and literature—United States—History. 5. Mythology, Classical, in literature. 6. Women—Mythology. 7. Myth in literature. I. Title. PS374.F45 B58 2001 813.009’9287—dc21 2001027354 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611–2079 http://www.upf.com This book is dedicated to all of my “literary mothers” who have assisted me with the birth of my very own book. Contents 1. Tracing Arachne’s Web: Mythic Methods and Femin(ine)ist Fictions 1 2. Occulted Words and Mythic Worlds 16 3. Unraveling Demeter’s Garden: Demeter and Persephone in the Works of Sarah Orne Jewett and Emma D. Kelley-Hawkins 26 4. Aphrodite’s Fall: Aphrodite, Undine, and Andromeda in the Works of Onoto Watanna, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Edith Wharton 53 5. Hekate’s Queendom of the Damned: Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood 87 One Thread of Arachne’s Web 106 Notes 109 Bibliography 115 Index 123 1 Tracing Arachne’s Web Mythic Methods and Femin(ine)ist Fictions From classical mythology we hear the story of Arachne: mortal daugh- * ter of a famous dye-maker, and a brilliant mistress of the loom who entered into a contest with Fate-Weaver Athena. During the course of the contest, Arachne weaves a perfect tapestry depicting the scandals of the gods, thus sending her immortal competitor into a rage. Athena then strikes Arachne with her shuttle, transforming the young woman into a spider; thus, Arachne is left to practice her craft without danger of out- doing the goddess again. Certainly, this myth is a not-so-subtle parable of the dangers of the student outdoing the teacher or of the underling outperforming the master, but the myth is usually told from the point of view of one sympathetic to those in power—the gods. So what can Arachne’s story reveal when the story is told from her point of view? To understand Arachne’s point of view, it is important to compre- hend the diversity of Arachne’s symbolic and metaphorical meanings. For example, her skill in weaving tapestries is also symbolic of her skill in weaving stories—her myth tells how her final work narrated in thread the scandals of the gods. Accordingly, the figure of Arachne calls to mind a metaphor for women writing, one that is embedded in her name itself. In Lady of the Beasts, Buffie Johnson explains the ety- mological roots of Arachne’s name and her symbolic creature: “The 2 * Tracing Arachne’s Web: Myth and Feminist Fiction word spider comes from the Old English spinan, meaning ‘to spin.’ The mod- ern word spinster, unwed woman, arises from the ancient idea that the spin- ners of fate were virgin goddesses who spun not only human life but the fate of the world. In Sanskrit, to sew is siv, the same root as thread. It is preserved in the Latin suo; in English, ‘to sew.’ Another Sanskrit root is nah; from it stems Latin neo and necto ‘spider,’ literally ‘the wool spinner.’ Rak in Greek corresponds to the Greek word meaning ‘to stitch together,’ ‘to weave’; hence Arachne, a fine weaver in Greek myth” (210). Johnson further demonstrates that the spider is an intermediary or liminal figure because she weaves her web in the air yet anchors it to the ground; hence, she is neither fully a creature of the sky nor of the earth, but a part of both. Like Arachne, the women I study here—Sarah Orne Jewett, Emma D. Kelley-Hawkins, Onoto Watanna, Edith Wharton, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Djuna Barnes—are also intermediary or liminal figures. It seems no two scholars can agree upon whether writers in this group are a part of the tradi- tional canon of American literature or outside of it; whether they are mod- ernist writers or writing fiction that lies outside the scope of modernism; whether they are true feminist writers or too sentimental, traditional, roman- tic, regional, or nihilistic to be feminist. As a result of these characteristics, then, the liminal figure of Arachne is the perfect ruling metaphor for the women writers analyzed in this study. In addition to her appearance in classical mythology, Arachne also appears in Native American religious myths in the figure of Spider Grandmother or Thought Woman who also weave stories; however, Spider Grandmother’s power is even more significant than Arachne’s because she has the power to create life itself. Marta Weigle explains that for Pueblo peoples, Spider Grand- mother is a “supreme being who creates everything by thinking, dreaming, naming, and ritual singing” (346). In another context, Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko narrates Spider-Woman’s story: Ts’its’tsi’nako, Thought-Woman is sitting in her room and whatever she thinks about appears. She thought of her sisters, Nau’ts’ity’i and I’tcts’ity’i, and together they created the Universe Mythic Methods and Femin(ine)ist Fictions * 3 this world and the four worlds below. Thought-Woman, the spider, named things and as she named them they appeared. she is sitting in her room thinking of a story now. (1) Silko’s poem tells the story of the mythological spider who creates the Uni- verse by thinking it into being, just as Thought-Woman or Spider Grand- mother weave the stories that tell the world into existence. As a result, when set beside that of Spider Grandmother or Thought-Woman, the story of Arachne can be re-seen as an empowering woman’s mythology that can re- vise the perspective of a somewhat silent classical Arachne. Arachne is a powerful metaphor for the study of women writers who, like Spider Grandmother, think up new worlds in the stories that they spin, and who, like Arachne, dare to challenge the establishment by comparing them- selves to it. But as Jane Caputi observes, Arachne’s story reveals that this can be a dangerous and radical enterprise, because when women “foray into the realm traditionally forbidden to our sex—the realm of the sacred storytellers, symbol and myth-makers—we participate in the creative powers of Thought Woman, employing thinking, naming and willing as forms of power exer- cised consciously and/or intuitively in the creation of the world(s) we in- habit” (427). Like Spider Grandmother Arachne, the women writers studied here foray into realms traditionally forbidden to their sex in order to weave new fictional worlds and create new female and feminist mythologies. All of the women I study here create narratives that employ both modern- ist literary techniques and classical or mythic tropes; however, my goal is not to use my analysis of these women writers to create an ultimate definition of either literary myth or literary modernism, nor is this a comparative study of classical and contemporary texts. Instead, my intention is to explore literature that exists on the margins of both modernism and myth in order to provide a provocative, albeit partial, rereading of all three. While so-called high mod- ernists such as Eliot, Joyce, Yeats, and Pound all have well-documented con- nections to myth, others writing along the historical and formal margins of 4 * Tracing Arachne’s Web: Myth and Feminist Fiction modernism have significant relationships to myth as well.