Goddesses a go-go

[steepholm]

This one's from a student of mine: "Where are the mother goddesses in children's fiction?" Not just goddesses, but mother goddesses, particularly those of a naturey, earthy kind, but at any rate really authoritative types. Minor godesses, chthonic or simply bloodthirsty goddesses, probably don't count - unless their bloodthirstiness is very firmly established as an element of a natural cycle. (Sulis in my Death of a Ghost might just scrape in under this definition, but on reflection she's too much a genius loci, and somehow not sufficiently "above the fray" to qualify. Must think more on this...)

Anyway, I discussed this with lady_schrapnell the other day, and we came up with a few ideas, which I carefully wrote down on one of my infamous scraps of paper, and then just as carefully mislaid. But from memory, our haul looked something like this...

Susan Cooper: Gaia (from Green Boy) indubitably, and maybe also the Lady from The Dark is Rising sequence.
Diana Wynne Jones: Libby Beer (from Drowned Ammet - a book that does gods and goddesses the way I really want them to be).
Frances Hodgson Burnett: Susan Sowerby (from The Secret Garden). A metaphor, maybe, but a pretty insistent one! But then again maybe she's more a priestess of Cybele?

We ummed and aahed over the maid-mother-crone combos represented by, for example, the Carlisle witches in Margaret Mahy's The Changeover - and not because the maid is a man-maid. Personally I don't think their magic is quite fecund enough for true Mother Goddess status, but since I'm not really sure what I mean by that statement (I have been proved 100% Intuitive - see last post - and should never be pressed on such matters) I'm not the least prepared to defend it.

I did wonder about Catherine Fisher's Ceridwen (in Darkhenge), but hit my shins on a similar kind of doubt. You couldn't say that a Gravesian muse is uncreative, exactly, but - well, I don't know. (I do not know much about goddesses - though I think that Hafren is a strong brown one.)

Well, there we kind of dried up. Surely there must be so much more to say about children's lit mother goddesses? Help me (and my student) out, please!

Comments

[hafren.livejournal.com]

What I'm wondering is why one would expect to find many of them in children's books. The first thing an author generally seems to have to do, to emancipate a child protagonist and let them do interesting things, is remove the parent figures, hence the prevalence of literary orphans. If there are substitute-parent figures (and I'm assuming all gods, literary or otherwise, are basically that), they might well be more liable to be male, simply because more children are lacking a father than a mother - also perhaps because mother-figures are more liable to stifle a sense of adventure (I'd say the archetype there was Kanga). I'm sure, when I was a child, the last thing I wanted to read about was natury, earthy, really authoritative types. I do think the Queen, in The BFG, is used as a mother-figure in the same way that the BFG is used as a father-figure, but she's kept well in the background, which, IMO, is where adults, especially mother figures, belong in children's books. The last thing you want in the middle of an adventure is someone wittering at you not to get your socks wet.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The first thing an author generally seems to have to do, to emancipate a child protagonist and let them do interesting things, is remove the parent figures

This is one reason I love Noel Streatfeild's Gemma: not only are the adults there, but they sit and listen to their children's concerns, take them seriously, and reflect back good advice.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I can't really answer your first question, although my student's motivation for wanting to find goddesses has something to do with his research, which is on Philip Pullman.

But I know what you mean. And it's notable that several of these figures come in only at the end of the book, to say in effect: 'Well done, and here's your reward!' or possibly (and more dispiritingly for the independent-minded protagonist) 'I've actually been watching over you all this time, my pet. Didn't you guess that the Well of Wishes in chapter two was really my belly button, or that the Forest of Forgetting was in truth a lock of my naturally-curly hair?'

On the other hand, male gods can be pretty demanding when it comes to keeping your socks dry, washing your hands, etc. Cf Leviticus!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

God(dess) help me, but all that came to mind was Mrs Bagthorpe.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The Bagthorpes are a shameful gap in my education, but from what I've heard that sounds very plausible!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I think they are absolutely hilarious - I reread a couple earlier in the year. The jokes were funny enough when I was 10, they're even better and wickeder when you're an adult.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Oh, what a fun idea! It made me think of Eve in Hilary McKay's Casson family books too, who'd be an interesting study as a mother goddess. Not what's being looked for at this point, sadly, but what a great topic.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I've been relistening to the audio version of The Lord of the Rings over the weekend, and was struggling to think of a mother goddess type in Tolkien, and wondered whether Melian the Maia (mother of Luthien) counted.

Oh, and the instant I type that, I think of Yavanna the Vala!

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Just remembered Megan Whalen Turner's books were others on our list - not necessarily mother goddesses specifically, but some very powerful, well-done goddesses.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Why is Mrs. Sowerby a priestess of Cybele? All I can think of regarding Cybele is the bit about castrating her priests, and that doesn't seem to have anything to do with Susan Sowerby at all.

There are all the children's fantasy series(es) (What's the proper plural of 'series'?) in which something that looks very much like Wicca is constructed as a foil to medieval Christianity. Monica Furlong's Wise Child series has twelfth- (I think) century witches who seem to worship a goddess. I suspect that Furlong is trying to write a children's Mists of Avalon, although I'm never sure how well she succeeds.

What about Lloyd Alexander's Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch?

(By the way, I wandered over here from thedarkisrising and I'm fascinated by your thoughts. May I friend you?)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Why is Mrs. Sowerby a priestess of Cybele? All I can think of regarding Cybele is the bit about castrating her priests, and that doesn't seem to have anything to do with Susan Sowerby at all.

I'd forgotten about the castration thing! (Funny how we never get to see Mr Sowerby...) I was only thinking that Susan Sowerby - particularly when taken in conjunction with her son Dickon, who with his pipe is admittedly more like Pan than Attis, seems to embody some kind of natural principle of growth, and in a generative as well as a social sense to be a Great Mother. Her appearance in the garden towards the end of the book (in a chapter telling entitled "It's Mother!" sets the seal on the garden as a place fully restored to life....

“Who is coming in here?" he said quickly. "Who is it?"
The door in the ivied wall had been pushed gently open and a woman had entered. She had come in with the last line of their song and she had stood still listening and looking at them. With the ivy behind her, the sunlight drifting through the trees and dappling her long blue cloak, and her nice fresh face smiling across the greenery she was rather like a softly colored illustration in one of Colin's books. She had wonderful affectionate eyes which seemed to take everything in -- all of them, even Ben Weatherstaff and the "creatures" and every flower that was in bloom. Unexpectedly as she had appeared, not one of them felt that she was an intruder at all. Dickon's eyes lighted like lamps.
"It's mother -- that's who it is!" he cried and went across the grass at a run.

I don't think Burnett is doing more than flirt with the possibility of Susan S as an earth-goddess (or representative of same), but I do think she is flirting.

Is there a goddess in Wise Child? I seem to remember a lot of tarot reading and herb steeping, and an intolerant male religion being opposed to nature-friendly female wisdom, and it wouldn't surprise me to hear that there was a goddess involved too, but I just don't recall. But it's a while since I read it. It's a much bigger while since since I read the Prydain books - thanks, I'll check them out.

And of course you may friend me - as I am about to do to you!

[rhus-typhina.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid this is going to be immensely unhelpful, because I don't remember title or author - but maybe someone else knows the book. But I *have* to mention it, because it is in fact a children /ya book about *the* mother goddess set in the Stone Age (altough possible German).

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venusfigurinen

(the links in German, but it's about the pictures...)

It's the story of a girl who is in the course of the book, becoming a shaman/priest of the mother godess. There's dreams and visions, if I recall correctly. In the end she is making (carving? sculpting?) a figur of the godess...

There. (And I know I'll spend more time looking for the title.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks, rhus_typhina! That sounds interesting: let me know if you find the title.