Subheading
Deirdre Hayward
John Pennington finds a deconstructive approach "intriguing"; I find it much more than this, opening up texts, as it does, and changing conventional expectations and circumscribed interpretations. It seems clear to me that MacDonald himself adopts this approach: a close look at even his more conventional texts, such as Robert Falconer (Hayward, N. Wind 15, 19-25) or Donal Grant, shows how subversive they are, with normal expectations confounded.
With regard to binary thinking, Pennington is quite right to say that we are conditioned by it, and that MacDonald uses it; but MacDonald constantly strains against it. To deconstruct such thinking we are inevitably bound to employ those same categories of thought which we are trying to destroy-we have no other tools. Thus to say that MacDonald is so conditioned, is not to assume that he is unaware of it, nor that he cannot escape from it. After all, despite their life-long conditioning, the Day Boy and the Night Girl still manage to break their moulds.
Pennington suggests that, having rejected his feminist account by deconstructing the feminine-masculine dichotomy, I "commit" a similar binary opposition by using the word "evil," pointing out that "evil exists only in relation to the good." I use inverted commas for "evil" as a deliberate disclaimer, which denies any conceptual solidity to the word, any defined ontological status. And I do this because MacDonald himself takes great pains not to set up "evil" and "good" as mere oppositions: indeed, for him they do exist in a relationship with each other, but on the same spectrum. Evil is "the only and best shape which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good" (Phantastes, final para.) It is a false opposition, existing "only by the life of the good, and has no life of its own, being in itself death" (U.S. 512). Indeed, "all extremes" says MacDonald, "touch [. . .] they lean back to back" (Paul Faber 284). Further deconstructing the terms, MacDonald's radical theology shifts conventional ideas of good and evil by arguing that evil is too much self, self-willed isolation from God, and good is abandoned self, renounced to God (see the sermon "Self Denial" and, of course, Lilith). Ultimately, good and evil are for MacDonald slippery, false oppositions, for "oneness" with the Divine is his goal, a state where all such oppositions are reconciled. The only one which matters is that of self (-will) or non-self (in God), and that is surely one which we can allow him. MacDonald must speak popularly of God as goodness and light as opposed to evil and darkness, otherwise the whole idea of a loving Deity becomes meaningless, as does the necessary "conditioning" tension within which he frames--and struggles to expand--his theological and metaphysical thought.
Of course, Pennington is correct to say that no text can claim exclusive rights to one interpretative reading-and this naturally applies to mine. Yet I do value texts--and interpretations--which do not lead towards closure, as they remain alive and breathing, emergent, and continually challenging at new levels--a point also noted by Pennington. All interpretations can illuminate MacDonald's text, and basically there is no "right" reading of Lilith--though there may be more restricted ones, which press limitations on MacDonald's creative thinking.
Adelheid Kegler
That a discussion concerning the interpretation of a work of literature is carried out controversially, goes without saying. But it should also go without saying, that that model of interpretation is preferable by which the interpreter is able to categorise the phenomena in question both in a more comprehensive way and with less contradictions than other models. That is the way the method functions which--drawing on the laws of thought--should be employed to verify conceptions.
This position requires that cognition is possible. It is related to truth as a fundamental value, requiring an intelligent and responsible engagement to a reality beyond us. Great art deserves to be taken seriously, i.e., to be researched with the intention of true cognition. For it is itself under a commitment to truth:
Truth is learnt, found, in specialised areas of art where the writer (for instance) struggles to make his deep intuitions of the world into artful, truthful judgement. This is the truth, terrible, delightful, funny, whose strong lively presence we recognise in great writers and whose absence we feel in the weak, empty, self-regarding fantasy of bad writers. (Murdoch 215)
John Pennington understands himself as a representative of a school of thought which is engaged in the "game of criticism"--the worst sort of a game: a "useful activity"--by which meaning is severed from truth and language from world. Consequently, there is a complete lack in his exposition of the sense of obligation which should give every statement its philosophical basis. He sees himself in a position to dismiss any approach aiming at cognition as a mere "confidence trick." He does not take note of my arguments which come from the context of the History of Consciousness.
Work cited
Murdoch, Iris. "Derrida and Structuralism." Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. London: Penguin 1993, 185-216.
Colin Manlove
The original letter from John Docherty asking for reactions to John Pennington's essay on Lilith, ventured that: "Nearly all our [North Wind's] contributors have, it seems, either felt more comfortable with a more traditional critical approach or believed that modern techniques are inappropriate to MacDonald's texts." If that is so, several of them would seem to have changed stance, as four of the responses here emerge from positions developed in recent critical theory. The question of whether Pennington's own "theoretic" approach was appropriate to an investigation of MacDonald's work is not really addressed, perhaps because most agree with it, or else, as in my case, they tend to concern themselves not with the rightness of the approach so much as the yield of insight from it. Only Richard Reis raises objections to literary theory, but that is more in relation to its language than to the theory itself. The issue is however a real one here. How appropriate are the intellectual abstractions of literary theory to a writer who said his work was beyond such things? Or again, since most modern criticism would rather talk about different textual realities than admit the notion of a transcendent one, what has it to say of books that try to convey Christian or even mystical experience?
Overall, both in the "fors" and the "againsts," there is a sense of enclosed theoretic approaches rather than critical engagement. Pennington is being judged not so much on his merits, as by how far he fits in with the given critical position of his readers--good if he does, bad if he doesn't. There is little notion that one might be learning something from him, and still less of a community engaged in the shared pursuit of exploring literature. It struck me that one of the reasons for this is that few address the specific text, wherein all debates gain clarity and can really interact. I'm not sure if the current view is not sometimes that "the text" is a conservative notion and that there are as many texts as readers (which in a sense has always been true), but surely these readers start from a common datum, or if they do not, we learn only about their views. Or perhaps there is a different datum now--not the text itself, but the text seem through the eyes of certain canonical theorists, who are often cited with a regularity previously bestowed on the author's own words, and with a veneration not unlike that accorded by mediaeval writers to the auctores.
So far as Pennington's (generous) reply to the replies is concerned, I found it conducted on theoretic terms that made only one reference to the actual story and the text. It struck me more as a debate about the rightness of critical approach than about the rightness of conclusions, and as such it simply does not interest me. Pennington's delight in "intellectual sparring" here is more one of well-conducted abstract discussion than of argued proof through evidence. This may however be put down to the kinds of comments he received, which did not invite any other mode of reply.
There seem to me however some specific points where a priori readings come near enough to the text to be questioned.
i) In talking about Lilith as forced or repressed, the feminist argument seems not to consider how much she is a ravening oppressor to mothers and their babies in Bulika. Or is this to be seen as the consequence of her assumed rejection by Adam? If so, this in turn would raise the question of what she was like in the Zohar that this had to be done-and there one would find that it was Eve who supplanted her.
ii) If Lilith is the "alluring and allusive ideal-other that is the self just beyond completion and beyond containment" (Rod McGillis), how is she different from the no more capturable ideal of the white lady in Phantastes?
iii) Deirdre Hayward seems at pains to de-specify the text, so that Lilith has no fixed self, is not simply a woman, is not different from other evil or male characters in MacDonald's work, and so on. But to say that, because her self is not "wholly defined" (whose is?) we cannot say anything valid about it at all, seems open to question. If that self is made of many selves, then those of them it attends to are real enough on their own terms, and to say feminist things about one of them is not to suppose that that one is all of them. Again, to say that "we have no criteria for knowing what it is that (female) freedom, fulfilment or lack signify" seems debatable since Lilith outlines them to Vane in chapter 25 (134-35) and Adam to Lilith in the poem fragments (150-153); and Lilith in a stunted way tries to live them as leopardess and in Bulika.
iv) How is Lilith, the rebellious text against patriarchal Victorians (David Jasper), any different from, say, Paradise Lost? Isn't there much sympathy for her here in just the vein of Satan versus God in Paradise Lost because she has such energy, and is the under-bitch? But in turn, isn't the mystical drive of the book as strongly felt as she is? Surely the point is not the general one of the "patriarchal" nature of MacDonald's faith (if it is that, since he always describes the Father as love), but whether fascination with Lilith has greater textual force than the drive towards God.
v) I can find nowhere in the book which says that the volume from which Adam reads to Lilith was written by her (as Kegler and--apparently--McGillis assume). It seems more like a dramatised monologue that damns her as she would not herself--her line is rather pages 134-35. It infuriates her, and its words when it is thrown before her have the consequence of fixing her, preventing her escape.
Rod McGillis
The various reactions to John Pennington's reading of Lilith confirm the book's power to provoke. I like this. I am also surprised to see that a so-called "feminist" approach to the book raises such resistance. I gather that such an approach does not meet full favour because it reduces MacDonald's complex book to a familiar tale of patriarchal authority and the diminishment of woman. As we know, feminism as both a method of textual interpretation and as social practice has changed considerably over the past thirty and more years. It has evolved through "second wave" feminism, through post-feminism, and into theories of gender, transgender, and gay and lesbian sexuality and being. In other words, feminism does not (and never did) offer a single way of reading a text. Feminism has always had connections with non-feminist ways of thinking: we have had Marxist feminist readings, mythopoeic feminist readings, psycho-analytic feminist readings, and so on. None of these ways of reading necessarily delivers a one-dimensional text.
On the other hand, we have yet to find a way of reading that does not reduce texts. Reduction is the inevitable result of any reading of a text. Clifford Geertz's notion of "thick" reading is perhaps the closest we come to the possibility of non-reductive reading, but "thickness" may be well-nigh impossible for each of us to achieve in our readings, and even if it were possible, I am not entirely convinced that even with a thick reading we would avoid reduction of any text we wished to explicate. A text should not mean, but be. Or the only complete reading of any text is the text itself. Borges' "Pierre Menard, the Author of Don Quixote" makes the point, I think. The meaning of MacDonald's Lilith is Lilith. Doesn't MacDonald make this point in his essay "The Fantastic Imagination"?
In this same essay, MacDonald also allows that each reader will make of a book what she will. And this is as it should be. Once each reader articulates his or her reaction, the conversation is on the way. And as the conversation goes, I suspect we can see that each of us that converses will, in the words of Adelheid Kegler, "find what he looks for."
If we locate Lilith in its historical context, then discussions of androgyny or of women's concerns, or of the cult of the dead woman and so on, do not seem to me to be out of place. If we take just the question of women's concerns and ask, as Deirdre Hayward does: "Is 'a feminine desire for self' different from a 'male desire for self,' and in what way?"--then we must answer, must we not?, yes. If the male desire is for the mother, then the female desire is from the mother. We may, of course, not accept the Freudian narrative. If we do, then the question of desire is distinctly gendered. Females must desire differently from males because of their different relationships within the family romance and their different anatomical and biological make-up. The interesting thing about Lilith is that her desire is to be both the mother and the father. She wishes to contain both the fluid and the firmness. Such containment is impossible and she can only experience lack, even in the fullness of her power over Bulika. Lilith is confused in her sexuality, her desire is to be male as well as female. But of course, she remains subservient to the Shadow male; her desire finds its source in male desire. What MacDonald cannot do is imagine a truly female desire, as much as he may desire to do so. And so desire is the clue. Desire, however we define it, is that which eludes our grasp. It is that which males and females both experience as elusive.
Perhaps what compels readers of Lilith, at least in terms of its title character, is that female desire looks forward to release, to change, to challenge of convention and authority. Male desire, on the other hand, looks behind, back to the mother who so comfortingly protected the young man. Vane finds Eve attractive, and Mara and Lona, females who represent nurturing and self-sacrifice and succour and beauty combined. They are images of the mother. To turn away from such a comforting image and contemplate a woman who challenges the law of the father (while accepting the law of the dark father) inevitably unsettles. That this book challenges our sense of comfort seems to me unquestionable, and such a challenge ensures that we cannot rest complacent with a one-dimensional reading. Desire is mystery, and mystery is the condition of Lilith.
Richard Reis
John Pennington evidently misses my point, which is that the great majority of North Wind readers will find much of his article unintelligible. This is not a journal for literary critics only; it is equally for lay admirers of George MacDonald's works and ideas.
I did not, for example, mean to "challenge" Pennington's use of the word "signifier," but his failure to explain this technical term for most readers of North Wind. As for the critics cited in Pennington's study, I did not "dismiss" their work nor engage in "ad hominem attack" upon them, but (again) deplored Pennington's failure to elucidate the unclarified phrases of which I complain. For example, I am told that Bram Dijkstra's study (which I have not seen) does explain his phrase "therapeutic rape." Pennington could easily have provided the lay reader with the gist of that explanation, but neglected to do so.
No, Dr Pennington, my commentary's focus on your article's language rather than its ideas is not "begging the question," motivated, as you imply, by timid and compulsive conventional unwillingness to confront non-traditional theory. For an argument to be considered by its reader, it must first be intelligible to its reader. Neglect of this requirement may be merely negligence, but can give the impression of obscurantism.
Editorial contribution to the above comments
Contributors' comments have ranged widely over the issues raised by John Pennington, but I feel that one or two important issues have not received attention.
One perplexing aspect of modern literary criticism grounded in psychological theory is the way the existence of "natural laws" is usually ignored. All aspects of western culture have been subsumed by the consumerist ethos, with its assumption of an individual's right to the (unpostponed) satisfaction of every desire. Yet, as Kegler implies, for thousands of years it has been known that if people have deserts within their souls (especially those in positions of power like MacDonald's Lilith as ruler of Bulika and its hinterland), then their greed and folly soon creates external deserts (Inge, William Ralph, The Philosophy of Plotinus, London: Longmans 2nd ed. 1923, 28-31).
In the case of MacDonald's Lilith, the modern assumption is as absurd as it is irresponsible, because her's is not an autonomous identity. The internal nature of the adventures of MacDonald's protagonist Vane is now generally accepted. Yet many critics nevertheless treat the figure of Lilith as an autonomous female, not as an aspect of (the outlook of) Vane and of every adult male. Certainly, she can think of herself as autonomous, but all her different selves are related to the adult male. MacDonald was an out-and-out subversive in every literary genre he took up-as Hayward stresses in the present discussion. To imply that, because he took up the Lilith myth he was obsessed with Lilith in the same way that Bram Dyjkstra shows so many men to have been in the late nineteenth century, is to ignore all his powerful subversive irony in Lilith.
MacDonald concentrates particularly upon showing how the Lilith side of man can work towards disintegration of the personality. Where Mara (primarily acting as a personification of beneficial suffering) finally brings this home to Lilith in chapter 39, MacDonald largely confines himself to a straightforward, unbiased dramatisation of parts of Mark 9 and 10. He makes clear that what Lilith is being asked to give up is not-giving, nothing else; exactly as Christ-Jesus summarises in the passages of Mark which use the same imagery. To suggest that Jesus' discourses here imply a "patriarchal" God, or that their moral content is "mythical," would be absurd. Yet because MacDonald's Adam-figure is depicted (at this stage of the story) as a patriarchal religious figure, he is identified with MacDonald, and the whole episode is assumed to display MacDonald's patriarchal view of God. This view is held regardless of MacDonald's extensive irony throughout the story, not least the way the character who becomes Adam first appears as a Mephistophelian figure.
Most of the themes which "feminist" readings recognise in Lilith are undoubtedly present, as is lucidly demonstrated by McGillis. MacDonald's aim is not the approval or rejection of fin de siècle (or twenty-first century) fantasies about these matters. He seeks the roots of their manifestations. The fantasies themselves are as insubstantial as is Lilith herself when disintegrating into obscene fragments in the Bad Burrow (50), and MacDonald may well intend readers to recognise this initial glimpse of Lilith as a summation of her nature.
A few days ago i noticed for the first timwe the relevance to Lilith chapters 38-40 of verses 33-50 of Mark 9 and 6-31 of Mark 10. (That MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons begin at the same point may not be mere coincidence). Although much of Lilith is "biblical" in tone and in its central allegories, it seems to contain less actual biblical allusions than might be expected. When striking words or phrases are checked against a good concordance, however, allusions are found to be numerous. A first attempt at this, by Tim Martin, (North Wind 14 (1995), 75-78) suggests-as might be expected-that biblical allusions are most abundant in three chapters: 29, where Lilith as a bedraggled cat is confronted by Adam, 39 where Mara gains Lilith's repentance, and 43 where Vane in his "death-sleep" talks with Adam. Martin's check-list does not, however, bring out the crucial importance of the Mark passages.
Mark 9.33-50, which is paralleled and supplemented by Matthew 18.1-10, describes Jesus' strong response to the disciples after they have been disputing as to who is greatest amongst them. The admonition is given "in the house" in Capernaum (verse 33). The definite article is unexpected here when there is no previous mention of a house. MacDonald takes up this symbolic emphasis upon "the house" by using it in the titles for chapters 38 and 40: "To the House of Bitterness " and "The House of Death."
Jesus, siting down to indicate that he is giving formal teaching to his disciples, first points out to them that if anyone wishes to be first they will be last of all (35). The principal stress in the Lilith legend is upon Lilith's wish to be first amongst mankind. Adam tells her she will be "the last to wake in the morning of the universe" (228).
Jesus then takes a small boy and sets him in the midst of the disciples, explaining that whoever takes a specific example of the truly childlike into their soul in a Christian spirit is taking Him (36-7). In Lilith, chapter 38, the Little Ones question the goodness of Mara. In response, she picks up Odo (the Little One who is closest to understanding and trusting her), permits him a clear glimpse of her normally veiled face, then sets him down among them (205). The Little Ones remaining with Vane at this stage of the story are a group of twelve whom he has chosen as his disciples. And he has just previously been attempting pedantically to teach them moral-spiritual discernment--fully living up to his homophone Vain. It should be added that after Lilith's repentance, she gives her first sign (ever) of any concern for others when she hears the Devil (Great Shadow) outside Eve's cottage and asks "'Are the children in the house?'" (226).
Jesus' words cause his disciple John to realise that he and the other disciples had exhibited spiritual arrogance on another recent occasion when they rebuked someone unknown to them who was casting out devils in Christ's name. Jesus again responds strongly: "Whosoever is not against us is for us" (40). Many people pray to be delivered from Mara/suffering, but she is able to drive out devils. Her all-night vigil with Lilith, which is the subject of chapter 39, is a casting-out of the Devil. MacDonald combines the Prince of the Air and the Prince of Darkness of his "A" draft into a conventional bat-winged image of "the" Devil, referring to this hybrid as the Great (i.e., everyone's) Shadow and describing him as overshadowing Lilith. "Overshadowing" is here used as a neat alternative way of expressing "possession."
Jesus illustrates his meaning here by teaching the disciples that even small gestures of friendship, such as giving a drink of water, have their spiritual reward if the gesture arises from the giver's recognition of Christ in a person (41). Mara gives the Little Ones their first-ever drink (of water) when they come to her house (205). Previously in the story, only skeletons and part-skeletons, slowly re-growing their humanity, have shown any recognition of the Christ-nature of the Little Ones (199-200). Nothing Vane has ever done, ostensibly for their good, has shown genuine recognition.
Jesus' next comment refers specifically to "little ones" (42). This is often misunderstood because of a failure adequately to distinguish the Greek paedion (used for the small child in verse 36) from micron. "Little ones" are what start to grow in people's souls when they begin to become again little children.
Matthew 18 interpolates here Jesus's emphasis that "it is a necessity that offences come" (7). This concept is absolutely central to MacDonald's theology. From his own experience he had found that most if not all spiritual growth is through suffering and oppression.
Many people, in rejecting Jesus' next words: "And if ever your hand make you stumble, cut it off" (43) have created a stumbling block to their own happiness. MacDonald's depiction of Lilith's ultimate desire to do exactly this has caused many people wilfully to reject Lilith. Because the whole of Lilith is spiritual metaphor, MacDonald has no need to stress that the amputation of Lilith's hand happens at the spiritual level. But it should be noted that the instant it is done Lilith falls "asleep"--which is the essential preliminary to entering into life in the sense this concept is used by Jesus and by MacDonald's Adam-figure. Raven/Adam (as perceived by Vane) is constantly changing, and not in all ways for the better. He rejoices in his patriarchal act of castration, but the Mark allusions show that he is here the unwitting tool of a higher power, which is Love--not patriarchal authoritarianism. Mara assures Vane that a "true, lovely hand" promptly begins to grow (229). Readers' distrust might have been reduced had she stressed that this new hand is no different from the old before that had begun to be clenched.
Jesus makes it clear that such cutting-out, if it is necessary, is to enable people "to enter into life." He stresses its crucial importance by applying it, not only to the hands which should implement the love streaming from the heart, but also to the eye (47), which should look up for inspiration, and to the foot (45), which should tread rightly on the Earth. And, after each of these three, He alludes to the closing verse of Isaiah, warning that if people do not cut out an offending member their spirits must exist--before as well as after death--"where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (44; 46; 48). This fiery worm burrows into Lilith and is crucial in enabling her ultimately to recognise herself as she is (207; 210). It then presumably dies, its task achieved.
Jesus' final words in this discourse stress the core of his teaching here: that his disciples must learn to "have peace with one another." He also emphasises that "everyone must be salted with fire" (49). This metaphor seems appropriate to Lilith's ordeal, although it does not appear in any of the versions of Lilith. It is, however, used by MacDonald as the title for his next novel.
The same teaching is taken up again with different emphasis in Jesus' next discourse (Mark 10.6-31 paralleled by Matt. 19.4-26). It is first applied to marriage (6-12). Adam's union with Lilith and subsequent marriage with Eve is essential to the plot of Lilith. Jesus quotes from Genesis: "male and female created he them" (6). MacDonald, like Blake, seems to read the Hebrew as indicating that humans were first created in heaven as male-female. The subsequent split involved loss of love. MacDonald's Adam rectified this-as far as is possible for man on Earth--by union with Eve: "so then they [we]re no more twain, but one flesh" (8). But he has been unable to live satisfactorily with Lilith--a portion of his femininity which could not split off because essential to enable him to be attracted to Eve. This portion is not simply "the body's desire and the desire for the body" as McGillis expresses it, although that is, of course, its most obvious element.
Jesus repeats and extends with many children (13-16) his teaching with a young child in 9.36-37. Then a rich young man too attached to his possessions comes to seek help from him (17-27). MacDonald quotes Jesus' response from verse 27 "'with God all things are possible'" and then accurately summarises the earlier part of this response (23-26) as "He can save even the rich!" (216). Jesus's words are wholly appropriate to MacDonald's context: love of possessions--including friends, relatives and aspects of oneself if these are regarded as possessions--does distract from deeper, selfless love (agape).
Jesus summarises and closes this discourse almost as he began his previous one: by pointing out that "many that are first shall be last; and the last first" (31).
Second Part of Author's Response Essay (Responding to Second Round of Critical Comments)
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
I guess it can be considered a frabjous day when you can finally bring some closure to a critical project. I will be able to callooh! and callay! once I respond to the final round of comments the readers supplied. First and foremost I want to thank all the readers who read with utmost care my article. If I were asked to revise the article, I would revise according to all the comments presented, for gaps and lapses in an argument can only be found when a work is subjected to such critical scrutiny.
And the mome raths outgrabe: A Coda
"Two objects [. . .] cannot exist in the same place at the same time!" So exclaims Vane to Mr Raven in Lilith. "Can they not?" asks Raven, "I did not know!-I remember now they do teach that with you. It is a great mistake-one of the greatest ever wiseacre made!" (20). Vane's difficulty in understanding the seven dimensions in Lilith provides an apt coda to this critical discussion about MacDonald's fantasy novel: when we interpret Lilith we should understand that there are simultaneous interpretations that often compete with--even negate--other interpretations. But taken together, they provide us with a holistic critical picture that becomes a kind of looking-glass into Lilith. In the paragraphs that follow I will briefly respond to the final comments of the critics who have sensitively read and subsequently critiqued my essay.
My initial response to Richard Reis was based upon the assumption that he did not endorse literary criticism he deemed obscure, that is, criticism focused on more contemporary critical theory like feminism and post-structuralism. But Reis' primary concern is with audience: "John Pennington evidently misses my point, which is that the great majority of North Wind readers will find much of his article unintelligible. This is not a journal for literary critics only, it is equally for lay admirers of George MacDonald's work and ideas." Reis' major complaint is that I need to define my critical terms more for the lay audience. On the one hand I agree with Reis completely, for the audience of North Wind is a hybrid one, ranging from MacDonald scholars (and Victorianists) to those lay admirers that Reis identifies. I admit that for the latter audience my article (and this project in general) may confuse. On the other hand, a critical essay is designed for a specific audience, and I would argue that what a specialist audience expects is something quite different than a general overview of Lilith. I must further admit that my intended audience is the literary critics. Having said this, however, I hope that the critical conversation that has taken place in this volume of North Wind will be interesting to all readers of MacDonald, for this critical enterprise was designed to reflect an often-neglected fact: that MacDonald is a nineteenth century writer who remains vital today.
Colin Manlove's final comments compliment those by Reis. He suggests that the critical debate focuses too heavily on the theoretical approach taken. "There is little notion that one might be learning something from him [Pennington] and still less of a community engaged in the shared pursuit of exploring literature." Manlove is correct to a large degree. After reading my initial responses to the critics, I realised that my "defence" centred more on my approach than on how Lilith may be better understood. Central to Manlove's overarching critique are two concerns: 1) "How appropriate are the intellectual abstractions of literary theory to a writer who said his work was beyond such things?" and 2) "Or again, since most modern criticism would rather talk of different textual realities than admit the notion of a transcendent one, what has it to say of books that try to convey Christian or even mystical experience?" These are central questions that this project doers not adequately address. I think an answer to the first question could be framed as follows: no writer has the author-ity to claim that his or her work is beyond critical approach, especially when literary criticism necessarily must reflect the mindset(s) of a particular time and place. Literary theory is the parasite that feeds off MacDonald, but it is the host that Lilith itself feeds off. In other words, theory injects new life into a literary work, further demonstrating the work's enduring value. An answer to the second question is more difficult, and I would argue that there is not a satisfactory answer, especially for those defining MacDonald as a Christian writer. I might venture to say that in MacDonald's case the claim that he is only trying to promote a form of Christian mysticism is doing an injustice to him: he is a much more complex man than that. I would evoke C. S. Lewis again, who shows that an apologist for MacDonald can simultaneously relegate him into the second- or third-tier of canonical writers.
Rod McGillis contends that this critical experiment "confirm[s] the book's power to provoke," while suggesting that "we have yet to find a way of reading that does not reduce texts." Evoking Clifford Geertz' notion of thick reading, McGillis argues for a criticism that approaches such thick description. What you are reading in this volume of North Wind is an attempt at that thick description of Lilith. McGillis adds a new idea to the discussion by suggesting that female desire is at odds with male desire: "What MacDonald cannot do is imagine a truly female desire, as much as he may desire to do so." Thus Lilith "challenges our sense of comfort." This is true too, to paraphrase King Lear.
Of course, Deirdre Hayward would challenge McGillis' binary oppositions of male versus female desire, as she does with my essay's focus on feminist self-postponement. She defends her "erased" terms of evil and good and suggests that MacDonald's ultimate goal in Lilith is to find a "oneness with the Divine [. . .], a state where all oppositions are reconciled." I agree that MacDonald attempts to do this, but I contend that the Lilith legend is too great for him to silence into a oneness with God. Hayward's view is that Lilith's severed hand suggests that she is in the process of transforming into good-"What we call evil, is the only and best shape which [. . .] could be assumed by the best good" (Phantastes 324) -demonstrating that MacDonald
must speak popularly of God as goodness and light as opposed to evil and darkness, otherwise the whole idea of a loving Deity becomes meaningless, as does the necessary "conditioning" tension with which he frames, and struggles to expand, his theological and metaphysical thought.
I once again agree with Hayward: MacDonald may desire to speak of God as goodness and light, but Lilith makes it impossible for him completely to do so, as she haunts the fringes of the novel at the end, in process of becoming good, it seems; but this is a process that probably will never be complete--Lilith cannot be tamed. It is interesting that in the Curdie books MacDonald does not strive for such complete unity. The Princess and Curdie finds characters spiritually evolving or devolving, and the ending admits to Gwentystorm's continual devolution to destruction. While MacDonald may intend Lilith to be a Lina figure, I do not sense that Lilith can reform like Lina, for she is made of material that defies. Hayward concludes that she embraces conclusions "which do not lead to closure, as they remain alive and breathing, emergent, and continually challenging at new levels." I intended my essay to be that brand of interpretation. I can only hope that readers take it that way.
Final we come full circle to Adelheid Kegler's response and John Docherty's editorial contribution. What do I mean by "full circle"? Kegler and Docherty represent a more traditional approach to MacDonald studies (and that is not a "bad" thing, it is just a "different" approach). Kegler, quite frankly, rejects my argument because she believes a critical approach should "categorise the phenomena in question both in a more comprehensive way and with less contradictions than other models." To Kegler, great art has "true cognition," a fundamental value and truth. Any criticism where "meaning is severed from truth and language from word" is suspect to her. She challenges my notion of the "game of criticism" as a "useful activity," because it diminishes the value and importance of literature. I never meant any disrespect to the importance of critical debate by calling it a game that has some utilitarian outcome, but I do not believe, as Kegler does, that there is a definitive interpretation which comes from the context of the History of Thought. Lilith creates such critical debate because the novel is slippery, is contradictory, "it challenges our sense of comfort," to quote McGillis once again.
John Docherty's fine end-comment resides in the critical realm that Kegler supports. His Jungian approach finds fault with any interpretation that "treats the figure of Lilith as an autonomous female, and not as an aspect of Vane and of every adult male." He suggests that the novel is partly about "how the Lilith side of man can work towards the disintegration of the personality." In effect he embraces the concepts of anima and animus of the collective unconscious that is ever present and unchanging: he embraces Eric Neumann's Great Mother. Furthermore, Docherty meticulously traces the biblical echoes from the New Testament (primarily Mark) which allows him to conclude that "the whole of Lilith is a spiritual metaphor." Docherty's interpretation certainly adds to our understanding generally and of Lilith specifically, however his interpretation would certainly be challenged by most feminist readings (and deconstructive ones too). If Lilith is seen as the anima of Vane, then her cosmogony is reduced, for she is made from the same materials as Adam-she is equal, and she must flee when she rejects the notion of subservience to Adam the male. Thus Lilith becomes the femme fatale, the tempting whore of Jungian analysis, not an independent self. It follows then, that Lilith is seen only in relation to Adam the masculine, and only as a destroying figure. Docherty, of course, argues for the balance of the masculine-feminine in Vane, but the privileged signifier remains the masculine. Gilbert and Gubar in The Mad Woman in the Attic are persuasive when they argue for the independence of Lilith.
I hope the readers of North Wind find this volume enlightening. I certainly found the project to be so. And I want to thank once again John Docherty, Deirdre Hayward, David Jasper, Adelheid Kegler, Colin Manlove, Rod McGillis and Richard Reis for their thoughtful and challenging comments. I could envision another go-around as we dig deeper and deeper into that complex work called Lilith. Maybe this critical enterprise should best be summed up not by MacDonald's friend Lewis Carroll but by Lilith itself--we are finally faced with "The Endless Ending" of literary analysis
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