Hesse\'s Portrayal of Women Herman

Hesse's Portrayal Of Women

Herman Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund

In Narcissus and Goldmund, Hesse imagines women as aspects of the archetypical, universal Mother; this abstraction at endows the feminine with a mystical power and stature, while simultaneously creating a stereotype which may serve to eclipse the desires and personhood of the individual woman.

Herman Hesse is well-known for his involvement with Carl Jung and the over-arching mysticism of his writings. He remained a committed dualist throughout his writing career, focused on the splintering and integration of the human soul. His book Narcissus and Goldmund is a classic example of this tendency. In the tale, the two protagonists represent different aspects of the human soul -- that one which is logical and spiritual and unphysical, which has to do with the abstract and the reasoned, and the other which is passionate, sensual, imagistic and intuitive, that which may be called the soul. This difference between spirit and soul permeates the whole world, having parallels in the dualism between night and day, hot and cold, action and passivity, male and female. This dualism is not only discussed in the work of Jung, but is also one of the central concepts in Eastern theology, where it is embodied as the yin and yang. As shown in his writing of Siddartha, Herman Hesse was also well versed with Hindu and Buddhist theories on life. Narcissus, who dedicates his life to the ascetic service of God, represents that cold light of masculine reasoning Spirit in this piece, while Goldmund --who becomes a wandering artist and lover-- represents that dark flame of the feminine Soul. The search of the male to become reintegrated with the Earth Mother, and hence to become truly whole, is brilliantly portrayed in this work. Hesse imagines women as aspects of the archetypal, universal Mother; this abstraction at endows the feminine with a mystical power and stature, while simultaneously creating a stereotype which may serve to eclipse the desires and personhood of the individual woman.

In Narcissus and Goldmund, the young artist deifies his mother and spends his life pursuing the favor and will of the Eva-mother. This concept is drawn from Herman Hesse's own idealization and worship of goddess-figures. Field quotes Hesse as having written in 1926, many years before undertaking this book: "I permit myself with the Madonna a cult of my own and a mythology of my own. In the temple of my religion, she stands beside Venus and Krishna, but as symbol of the soul, as a parable for the living redeeming glow which hovers to and fro between the poles of the world, between Natur and Geist, igniting the light of love." Through-out this book, the Mother is used to represent that side of our essential duality which is Soul. This is evident in Narcissus' explanation to Goldmund as to the differences in their natures:

Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are almost always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully, you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plenitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at the mother's breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars. Your dreams are of girls; mine of boys..." (Hesse, 45)

One can see here how that which is drawn from the Mother is defined as being based in the sensual and artistic, in the emotional and the artistic, and above all in the material. That which is drawn from the Father (who goes oddly unmentioned here), is based in the physical and mathematical, the rational and unfeeling, and above all that which is ideological.

As mentioned earlier, Hesse had a long-standing relationship with Carl Jung, so that the psychologist/philosopher is known to be a major influence upon the writer. This is clearly evident in the way in which Hesse writes about women, for he speaks of them much as Jung speaks of the anima, that archetypal female life-force which resides within each of us. Hesse, like Jung, writes of his characters taking of having in "their being" that which is the mother or the lover, and of interacting with this abstracted mother as with a part of themselves. There are, of course, some significant differences between Hesse's conception of the Mother and Jung's conception of the anima, namely that Hesse approaches the Mother in an unfailingly positive light, as being the source of all art and passion and sensation, an active and vital force, whereas Jung approaches the anima with a little less enthusiasm and considers it passive rather than active, receptive rather than creative, and capable of inducing rather than experiencing. Jung's relationship with the anima is complex. He was originally "ever wary and critical of the anima. Whenever he speaks of her, it is negative, uncomplimentary, or, at least, ambivalent.... [saying]'Women are a magical force. They surround themselves with an emotional tension stronger than the rationality of men.... Woman is a very, very strong being, magical. That is why, I am afraid of women.'" Eventually, however, after a near death experience in which he felt death approaching him as a mother (something which is obviously mirrored in Hesse's writings), Jung took a more positive approach to the anima, see it as "purely and irremediably irrational, the archetype of life,...direct, awesome, and immutable...the ultimate mysteries of anima [are] namely love, beauty, and wisdom." (Watsky) Critics have often pointed out the way that Goldmund's behavior, which he consciously understands as a search for the Mother force, is a search for identification with the anima, "in the case of Hesse's heroes, the famous phrase 'the eternally female leads us forward' obviously applies." (Baumann) Jung's experience with the anima as a midwife to death is also reflected in this book, as Goldmund begins to actually pity Narciss: "The price of [Narciss's] attitude towards life is the failure to realize the motherly life principle, and it thus transpires that, towards the end of the novel, he who once led Goldmund is himself led when the dying Goldmund draws his friend's attention to his unrealistic anima: "But how will you ever die, Narziss? You have no mother. How can we die without a mother? Without a mother, we cannot die." (Baumann)

The Mother is not merely the anima, however, nor merely the feminine force within Goldmund. She is also seen as a primal and overwhelming force in the world, the force of nature itself. Her connection with all thing numinous and magical is her connection to the actual matter of things, the blood and adrenaline and hormones and such that make up life and yet cannot be controlled by our conscious mind. Goldmund's connection to the Mother is powerful because he has a desire to reproduce and capture life, and to respond to the intuition of his senses -- he is a materialist, and this connects him the Her. The transcendence of the Mother is repeatedly expressed in the test, as here: "his mother meant not only all that was graceful; not only were her gentle look of love and sweet, happiness-prmising smile caressing consolations; but somewhere beneath this enticing exterior lay much that was frightful and dark, greedy and fearful, sinful and sorrowful, all that gave birth and all death." (Hesse, 59) the more Goldmund comes to understand the world, the more rounded his conception of the mother becomes, so that eventually she is seductively calling home plague victims with the same gentle voice she uses to help birthing mothers or panting lovers. "The greatest antinomies of the world, ordinarily irreconcilable, have found their peace and dwell together: birth and death, kindness and cruelty, life and annihilation" (Field)

Because the Mother herself is transcendent, Goldmund sees her mirrored in every woman. The Mother is all women, and all women are merely aspects of the Mother. In his many dalliances, he is seeking to better understand Her. "Goldmund's multiple experiences of love coalesce in his artistic vision of the eternal Eva-Mother which embraces love and death in one" (Field) This is evident in the fact that when he loses his virginity to Lize he becomes passionately enthralled with her, and yet never bothers to relate her name to Narciss. Rather, he refers to her as a messenger of his mother. Her kiss "was my mother's call..." (Hesse, 78) Even when he realizes that she will leave him very quickly, he does not care very much -- it is the concept of her, and of her as the great Mother guiding him, which is important. He leaves his home regardless of the fact that she does not go, because "it is the road to life" (Hesse, 79) specifically because it is the road to further carnal adventures. He finds that all women are receptive to his advances (at first) and even approach him lustfully, which he understands as being due to his dedication to the Mother. Lydia's restraint, likewise, he sees as a form of the Madonna's nature. He believes the Mother to be natural and physical and therefore preverbal, and finds that "It was fortunate that love did not need words." (98) the Mother may be life-giving (as with the woman whose child he helps to birth) or proudly dedicated to death, as with Rebekkah and the abstracted Mother of whome he says "instead of death... It will be my mother..." (Hesse, 313) in all the women he sees and loves, he does not find anything which requires his personal lifelong devotion (which devastates a few of them, such as poor Lene), and yet to each he is truly devoted as they are a part of the force of the goddess.

All this idealism of the feminine may serve to falsify or obscure real female experience. As one feminist writer says in reference to Jung's ideals of integrating the anima, "It strikes me as the ultimate in male hubris. Why bother with pesky flesh-and-blood women when they can be infatuated with a concept of the feminine in themselves? [Men try to] override [their] devaluing of women sufficiently to appropriate those 'feminine' qualities that will make [them] more complete person[s]...and, as a woman, I begin to feel like the witch doctor's mask hanging on his wall." (Knuth) This critique is unfortunately valid regarding Goldmund's treatment of the women he idealizes and abandons. His own selfish lusts frequently interfere with the legitimate treatment of a woman. For example, he often hushes women who wish to speak to him, or refuses to share with them. For example, his relationship with Lydia frequently bypasses her desire to speak and be spoken to: "How stupid of him; [he thinks] words were unnecessary in love; he should have kept silent. He said no more." (110)

Many other women also feel his slights when they try to approach him as complete humans rather than merely symbols of the Mother. For example, poor Maria --who is not beautiful enough to attract his attentions as he becomes more demanding of the Mother's beauty-- is not treated as if she were wholly human and he passes right over her feelings, though she loves him very deeply. Lene, as well, who ends up carrying his child, is hushed and even threatened (with losing her home and him) when she speaks of wanting him to give up his wandering ways and stay with her. She is forced to be falsely carefree and undemanding, even though her actual female nature seeks to keep and to nurture. Rebekkah, to whom he gives his aid in burying her father, is abandoned by him once she refuses any offer of his love. Rather than understand that she needs time and space in which to grieve, he presses his suit immediately. His theories of the Mother somehow seem to ignore the actual procreative ability of women and the demands that places on him and on them (he never seems concerned with impregnating the unmarried women he loves and leaves, though in that culture such a shame could destroy their lives and that of the illegitimate children). Nor does he allow that they might have the sort of intense logical and intelligence which he admired in Narcissus.

Moreover, the idealism expressed by all the characters regarding womanhood serves to divorce men and women from each other, severing lines of commonality that lead to communication. One recalls the way that Narcissus suggests that he and Goldmund are nothing alike because Goldmund is like his Mother -- once Goldmund comes fully into his mother-nature, they must separate. Neither protagonist ever actually makes a friend of a woman. "Hesse will ceaseless contrast Narcissus's and Goldmund's relationship with the relationships that Goldmund forms with women and he will ceaseless insist on the inferiority of the latter. On the matter of relationships between men and women, Hesse seems to... asserts the superiority of the friendship between males over any relationship with a woman and quite clearly asserts his belief that women are incapable of friendship:" (Ruckh) Goldmund only finds companionship in women when they serve his interests, and leaves them when they no longer meet his sexual needs.