Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman

by Tara Prescott

  This tale deals with the motifs of ethics and justice. The animal is the protecting agent and rewards ethical behavior.

  The theme of the grateful animal appears also in the famous tale, “The Good Fortune Kettle.”6 Folklorist Keigo Seki explains that the tale is very popular with children and is taught in schools, with the references to prostitution and animal cruelty omitted. The tale can also be found under the title “The Fox Harlot.”7 In the tale, a poor old farmer rescues a fox from the hands of three boys who are brutalizing it. The old man is a genuinely caring character repelled by the gratuitous cruelty displayed by the youths. He warns the fox, “You must be careful not to be caught by those boys again. Now you’d better hurry back to your den,” and he carefully releases the fox in the middle of a thicket. The next day the old man goes again to the mountains. The fox comes up to him and says: “Grandfather, grandfather, you saved my life yesterday when I was in great danger; I am more thankful than I can tell.” The fox offers to grant the old man three favors. Each time, the fox turns itself into a valuable that the farmer can then sell. First it turns into a copper kettle that the farmer sells to a priest, then into a beautiful girl that the farmer sells to a brothel, and then into a horse that the farmer sells to a rich foreigner. The farmer becomes rich from the sales, and his kindness to the fox is rewarded by his prosperity. Finally, the farmer honors the fox’s last wish; “in his mansion he built a splendid chapel where on the nineteenth day of every month he and the old woman would go and pray for the fox’s rebirth in paradise” (Seki 111). The moral beauty of this moving story lies in the mutual affection and respect between the human and the animal. The same theme, and the pattern of three tasks, appears in The Dream Hunters.

  Foxes protect their benefactors and their homes. “The Fox Wife” is a folk tale that also deals with the theme of transformation and gratefulness. A man rescues a white fox from drowning. The fox swears to repay his kindness, leaves, and then reappears as a maid. Soon she bears him a child. The man does not know of his lover’s true nature until the day their son tells him that his mother is sweeping the yard with her tail. In “Enough Is Enough,” a fox negotiates with the occupant of a house for the people and the foxes to coexist peacefully, swearing that they will protect the household (Tyler 114–115). The fox promises, “We’ll do everything we can to protect you from now on, if you’ll forgive us, and we’ll be sure to let you know when anything good is going to happen!” The Dream Hunters borrows specific motifs of the Japanese folk tale genre while incorporating universal notions found in fairy tales such as the absolute necessity to treat animals with respect.8 Helpful animals can bring divine aid and an intuitional perspective on the situation, as opposed to the shackles of human logic and rationality. In Japanese fairy tales, spirits are involved to fight for the health of a sick person (Tyler 34). Evil spirits cause the disease, and a protecting spirit invoked by a healer is often the solution. In The Dream Hunters, the fox obeys her own desire to protect and save the monk.

  After finding the fox in a deep death-like sleep, the monk carries her and leaves his temple to seek help. An old man on the road reveals to the monk what the fox has done. The monk needs guidance (literally beat into him), whereas the fox mostly worked out a way to save him on her own. The old man appears when the monk is in a hopeless and desperate situation from which only profound reflection or a lucky idea can extricate him. The character of the old man can be deciphered as both the Buddhist deity Binzuru Harada and the mentor in fairy tales. According to Jung, the mentor intervenes when the plot has reached a dead end: “Often the old man in fairytales asks questions like who? why? whence? and whither? for the purpose of inducing self-reflection and mobilising the moral forces, and more often still he gives the necessary magical talisman, the unexpected and improbable power to succeed.”9 Apart from his wisdom, the old man tests the monk’s moral qualities and makes his gifts dependent on this test. In fairy tales, the mentor’s presence is necessitated when the character is in a dead end, helpless and clueless. The intervention of the old man helps the monk but also points to the monk’s inability to progress on his own. The presence of a guide for the young man points to his weakness. The fox emerges as the clever and resourceful character of the story, in sharp contract to the monk. She is an autonomous female, independent and clear-sighted; the monk is mostly unaware and passive. He needs a guide, whereas she acts and decides. The dynamics of gender and power are in her favor.

  The fox achieves a heroic status by accepting rules knowingly. The Great Fox warns her: “He is only a human. [...] While you are a fox. These things rarely end happily” (34). By sacrificing herself willingly, she proves to the King of Dreams that she is a heroine. The King of All Night’s Dreaming gives her the help she asks for, as he later explains to the monk: “Your fox also came to me, and asked for a gift, although she was more honest about her love than you. And I gave her my gift. She dreamed your dreams. She dreamed your first two dreams with you, then she dreamed the last dream for you” (100). In this moment, Gaiman plays with the gender paradigms of heroic tales: the heroic rescuer in this story is female and the rescued party is male. Moreover, the rescuer is an animal, whereas animals play an auxiliary role of helper in the traditional tales. The kitsune fulfils many exploits: she explores the realm of dreams, meets the King of Dreams, and convincingly pleads her case. While her ultimate wish is not granted (the monk is not saved), the kitsune makes the greatest achievements of the story.

  Thanks to the fox’s irruption in his life and her disruption of his dreams, the monk eventually turns from a passive character to a self-actualized, responsible agent in control of his destiny, however tragic. Before encountering the fox, the young monk is isolated from social interaction and physical pleasures. His diet consists of rice and yams, and his daily life is scheduled according to the prayers and the tasks he needs to perform for the upkeep and maintenance of the isolated temple. His life is only mental and spiritual; there is a clear lack of balance. The fox represents the diametrical opposite to his passivity. By awakening his sensual side, she also addresses the unbalance in his life. In psychological terms, she has an educative and transforming influence on his eros.10 She helps him to rise out of his helplessness and passivity. The kitsune is a heroic agent for change and growth.

  Joseph Campbell’s influence, such a compelling feature of The Dream Hunters, is evident throughout Gaiman’s works. Stephen Rauch’s captivating monograph analyzes Joseph Campbell’s influence on Sandman.11 For Campbell, responsibility and sacrifice are vital concepts. A hero-to-be becomes a hero by facing and accepting the consequences of his actions. Campbell uses “the road of trials” to describe the long pilgrimage from the familiar to the unknown, where the hero-to-be is tested (97). The Dream Hunters presents a divergent interpretation of Campbell. The Dream King is clearly “the great figure of the guide, the teacher, the ferryman, the conductor of souls to the afterworld” (Campbell 72). The Dream King represents the link with Gaiman’s interpretation of Campbell in The Sandman. The kitsune’s progress through the realm of dreams corresponds to Campbell’s “road of trials” (Campbell 97). The testing of the kitsune’s resolve is essential for her to prove her merits and her understanding of what she is asking: “Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials” (Campbell 97). Making sacrifices defines the hero, who “must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty, and life” (Campbell 108). The kitsune closely follows a Campbellian heroic pattern. The Dream Hunters’ major divergences from Campbell are the hero’s animal nature and gender. As a consequence, the kitsune becomes an endearing and modern feminist character who articulates desire and who expresses her outrage at male authority figures. This is particularly evident in one of the fox’s last scenes with the Dream King, where she realizes that he has allowed the monk to undo all of her work and that, as a consequence, she will live and the monk will die:


  The fox threw herself to the floor at the king’s feet. “But you swore to help me!” she said, angrily.

  And I helped you.

  “It is not fair,” said the fox [106].

  The kitsune’s heroism is clear. But what about the monk? On a psychoanalytical level, Campbell’s notion of heroism could be tied up with Jung’s concept of individuation, which is essential in reaching the stage of personal development and maturity that makes one a hero. Even though the monk is quite a lackluster character at the beginning, his heroic nature is revealed thanks to the kitsune. Indeed, thanks to the information revealed by the Dream King, the monk becomes aware of the willing sacrifice that the fox made for him. The issue of free will and choice is crucial here. In a truly moving and very restrained conversation, the monk demands that the fox stop taking on the curse meant for him. This is the moment in the story when the monk rises to a heroic status; this is his sublime moment of moral nobility and courage:

  “My lord,” said the monk. “I am a monk. I own nothing but my begging bowl. But the dream that fox dreamed was my dream by rights. I ask for it to be returned to me.”

  But, said the King, if I return your dream to you, you must die in her place.

  “I understand that,” said the monk. “But it is my dream. And I will not have the fox die in my place” [106].

  Thanks to the fox, the monk is able to tap into his hitherto undiscovered capacity for heroism. By the end of The Dream Hunters, the monk becomes aware of his love for the fox, gains knowledge of his moral obligation towards her, and becomes her protector in his turn. This makes quite a sharp contrast when compared to the onmyoji’s fate at the end: naked, blind, demented, and shunned by all.

  The last facet of the kitsune is revealed after the monk’s sacrifice. Forced to return to the world by the monk’s sacrifice, she cares for his body until he dies and her grief turns to revenge. She vows to avenge the monk, declaring, “The onmyoji who did this to you will learn what it means to take something from a fox” (108). In order to seek justice from the onmyoji, she turns into a femme fatale. This is in keeping with Japanese folk tales, where foxes embody a dangerous sensuality and play on sexual desires. “Foxes are famous in Japan for masquerading as beautiful women—so much so that if a man runs across a pretty girl alone, especially at twilight or in the evening, he is a fool if he does not suspect her of being a fox. In other words, enchantresses are, literally, foxy ladies,” notes editor and translator Royal Tyler (49). The kitsune appears under the guise of “a maiden of high birth” (112) and bewitches the onmyoji with “the way she walked, respectful and seductive at the same time” (112). Her physical attributes match the requirements of the Japanese standards of grace and beauty: “her hair, so long and so very black12; her eyes, the shade of green leaves uncurling in the spring sunlight, her feet, which moved like tiny mice; the delicacy of her hand upon her fan; her voice, like a song heard in a dream” (112). Her physical description plays with the dialectics of concealing and revealing: “She bent over to pour him more sake, which caused her robe to fall open a little more” (116). Veils and screens are very important in Japanese daily life. Portable frames are used to make screens to conceal parts of a room. Concealment and “accidental” partial disclosure of her charms only increase her allure.

  Once again, Klimt’s influences on Amano’s style appear in the depictions of the kitsune. Hair features strongly as a symbol for sexual vitality in Klimt’s luscious portraits and in Pre-Raphaelite paintings. When she masquerades as a woman, the fox repeatedly uses her black hair as an erotic weapon of seduction. She sensuously dries her long black hair by the fire when she poses as a damsel in distress to trick the monk (14). When bewitching the onmyoji as a rich maiden, she also uses her hair, “so long, and so very black” to attract him (112). She also insists on wearing her hair down, which is erotic because it is a forbidden pleasure. The erotic power of loose hair is heightened by its transgressive nature. Amano’s admiration for the Pre-Raphaelites can be seen in the repeated motif of the fox-woman’s loose jet black hair. In the 1860s, the Pre-Raphaelites created quite a controversy by depicting their female sitters with loose hair. The Victorian public did not approve because “loose hair was worn only by children; in womanhood it was braided or pinned up and thereafter visible only when retiring or rising. Its appearance in art has therefore an intimate, erotic significance” (Marsh 48).

  The kitsune plays the part of the supernatural lover. By using her female charms and her sexuality as a weapon, she refuses passivity and exploitation by male figures. Instead, she turns her body into an instrument in the struggle against the oppressive male figure, the onmyoji. He is so mesmerized by her performance, so driven by lust, that he is willing to burn his worldly possessions, kill his family, and destroy his magic implements in order to have her. In old folk tales, as early as eighth-century records indicate, one finds the motifs of the swan maiden, or that of the wife from the upper world.13 Non-human or enchanted brides represent a strong erotic attraction to the protagonists of these tales (“The Crane Wife,” “The Woman Who Came Down from Heaven,” “The Snow Wife”). She turns into an agent of retribution:

  The Master of Yin-Yang was found the next morning in the grounds of a house. That had been abandoned twenty years earlier, when the official whose family had owned it was disgraced. Some said it was guilt that had brought him there, for, fifteen years earlier, the onmyoji had been in the service of the lord who had caused the downfall of that family [122].

  Earlier in The Dream Hunters, we learned that the monk’s father had “lost his house and all he owned” due to “powerful enemies” (50). Destitute and shamed, his father committed suicide. With the revelation at the end of the story, we realize that it was the onmyoji who destroyed the monk’s family. Therefore, the kitsune not only avenges the death of the monk, but also his family. This underscores that the kitsune is a powerful agent for justice and revenge who refuses passivity. The fox embraces action and empowers herself; she is the only female character with agency in the story.

  The intriguing distribution of power in the text makes the fox the real actor in the plot. This link between femininity and power is quite typical of folk tales. Marie-Louise von Franz makes an engaging analysis of gender and power in fairy tales. She sees fairy tales as vectors for the expression of the neglected feminine principle. In particular, folk tales and myths often feature feminine justice and feminine revenge. In Ancient Greek mythology, the goddesses Nemesis and Themis stand for revenge and justice respectively (von Franz 38–39). In The Dream Hunters, the kitsune combines characteristics of female classical deities. She represents Eros with her sensuality, Athena with her combativeness, and Aphrodite with her beauty. She is multi-faceted and talented.

  However resourceful, the fox confronts rules that cannot be changed. The tragic outcome of the story was foreshadowed by the Binzuru Harada, who tells the monk: “the fox will die, or you will, and there is not a thing you can do on this earth or off it that would change this, whether or not your motives are pure” (68). Likewise, the King of Dreams clearly explains to the monk: “If I return your dream to you, you must die in her place” (106). Feminine astuteness and self-sacrifice cannot prevent the tragedy, fate cannot be altered.

  The outcome is bleak. The final page of the story announces, “And that is the tale of the fox and the monk” (126). Or is it? Gaiman then adds a small epilogue to his tale:

  For it has been said that those who dream of the distant regions where the Baku graze have sometimes seen two figures, walking in the distance, and that these two figures were a monk and a fox, or it might be, a man and a woman.

  Others say no, that even in dreams and in death a monk and a fox are from different worlds, as they were in life, and in different worlds they will forever stay [126].

  In this turn at the end, Gaiman plays with the conventions of storytelling and lets the readers decide if this tale ends in a macabre or romantic way. He leaves the interpretation
of the ending to the reader, creating an opening for a typical “happy ending” for those who want it. This is also reinforced through Amano’s art, since the last illustration in the book shows the monk and the fox (in her human form), heads resting together, walking off into the sunset.

  Amano states, “I just hope my images give readers something unique and far reaching, instead of limiting their imagination to one stereotype” (McCabe 240). The same can be said about what Gaiman does with the text and the fairy tale genre. Together, Gaiman and Amano achieve a balanced collaboration in which their individual talents weave something new. In describing collaborative pieces, Gaiman notes, “the whole is not greater than the sum, the whole is different than the sum. The whole is a new person. The whole is a different entity” (McCabe 8).

  Together, Gaiman and Amano reimagine a type of story dating back to eighth-century Japan and reimagine it for a twenty-first century audience. They take the sparse simplicity of the folk tale narrative and Campbell’s heroic motif to create for an unforgettable, endearing, and original modern female character. The kitsune crosses boundaries and fights to express herself, to make her voice heard. She brings to the fore several key themes of feminism; she struggles for self-expression, confronts oppressive masculine figures and their rules, and transcends limitations placed upon her to be heard. The story is hers, rightfully so. All of her qualities and characteristics are threads woven into a tapestry of arresting beauty. The contrasting moral hues contribute to making the overall vision of the kitsune motif in this tapestry a rich and complex experience for the viewer.