When Fat Charlie visits the old ladies, each time they cast a circle to help him cross into the in-between dream-world of the gods. Yet their spell isn’t like any other—not like the Stepmother’s in “Snow, Glass, Apples” with her sky-clad passion for the safety of her kingdom, nor like Thessaly’s Drawing Down the Moon. The first time Fat Charlie visits them, Miss Noles laments that she could only find one true black candle. The others were black penguins. “And I had to go to three stores before I found anything.”209 Instead of the magical herbs necessary, Mrs. Bustamonte provides “mixed herbs” because “You ask me, it’s all mixed herbs.”210 A similar tale is told with the next spell—multi-colored sand from the gift shop, small white candles from the pool-side, and a borrowed bouquetgarni from the hotel kitchen. The lack of attention to so-called ritualistic detail is intriguing because of its realism. While most Neo-Pagans and most modern witches like to imagine their apothecaries are well-stocked with “devils grass, …St. John the Conqueror root, and …love-lies-bleeding…”211 more often than not, they make do with mixed herbs and novelty candles from the local discount shop. As Fat Charlie notes:
I think it’s all a matter of confidence. … The most important thing isn’t the details. It’s the magical atmosphere.212 The same can be said for Gaiman’s witches and for women’s magic—it’s not in the details, but in the intent or the atmosphere. Magic is, like women are, myriad, unique, and integral to what a woman is. Likewise, the witch is an image close to women—and yet held distant because of the negative stereotypes. Neil Gaiman’s role in portraying the witch can’t be easily categorized as feminist or misogynist. His work is neither, and yet he portrays a realistic view of witches, of the culture surrounding them, perhaps more so than any other.
___________________ 49 Gaiman, Fragile, 122.
50 Gaiman, Fragile, 123.
51 Gaiman, Fragile, 128.
52 Ibid.
53 Gaiman, Fragile, 125.
54 Gimbutas, 189.
55 Gaiman, Fragile, 129.
56 Gaiman, Fragile, 131.
57 Ibid.
58 Gaiman, Gods, 150-153.
59 Gaiman, Gods, 39-44; 50; 289-290.
60 Gaiman, Gods, 62.
61 Gaiman, Gods, 153.
62 Gaiman, Gods, 73-74; 85.
63 Gaiman, Gods, 76-78.
64 Gaiman, Gods, 87-91.
65 Gimbutas, 210.
66 Gaiman, Gods, 138-139.
67 Gaiman, Gods, 305-313.
68 Gaiman, Gods, 373.
69 Gaiman, Gods, 288-289.
70 Gaiman, Gods, 374-375.
71 Gaiman, Gods 328.
72 Gaiman, Gods, 337.
73 Gaiman, Gods, 333.
74 Gaiman, Gods, 27-31.
75 Gaiman, Gods, 374.
76 Coltri, 1.
77 Coltri, 8.
78 Ibid.
79 I Enoch, VII: 1-6.
80 I Enoch, VI: 2; VII: 1-6.
81 Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, 58-58.
82 Belanger, Sacred Hunger, 127-128.
83 Belanger, 124-125.
84 Bildhauer, “Bloodsuckers: The Construction of Female Sexuality in Medieval Science and Fiction,”
104-105.
85 Ibid.
86 Bildhauer, 105.
87 Bildhauer, 106.
88 Bildhauer, 112.
89 Brauner, 42-44.
90 Thurston, 58-59.
91 Ibid.
92 Gaiman, Fables, “Parliament of Rooks,” 13-17.
93 Ibid.
94 Gaiman, Fables, “Parliament of Rooks,” 14-16.
95 Gaiman, Gods, 29-30.
96 Williams, Deformed Discourse, 165-166.
97 Ibid.
98 Coltri, “The Challenge of the Queen of Sheba,” 8.
99 Williams, 143-146.
100 Coltri, 7.
101 Gaiman, Gods, 377-379.
102 Gaiman, Mirrors, 331.
103 Ibid.
104 Ibid.
105 Gaiman, Mirrors, 333-334.
106 Ibid.
107 Gaiman, Mirrors, 337.
108 Gaiman, Mirrors, 338.
109 Ibid.
110 Gaiman, Mirrors, 339.
111 Gaiman, Mirrors, 340.
112 Gaiman, Mirrors, 341.
113 Ibid.
114 Gaiman, Mirrors, 344-345.
115 Raffaele, “Sleeping with Cannibals,” 2-5.
116 Gaiman, Mirrors, 345-346.
117 Brauner, 62.
118 Gaiman and Reaves, 31.
119 Tolkien, The Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth, 401-402.
120 Ibid.
121 Ibid.
122 Gaiman and Reaves, 230-231.
123 Gaiman and Reaves, 136.
124 Belanger, 22.
125 Ibid.
126 Gaiman, Coraline, 21.
127 Gaiman, Coraline, 81.
128 OED online “beldam”
129 Bildhauer, 112.
130 Gaiman, Coraline, 27-28.
131 As discussed in Melody Green’s article in this present volume, and throughout Goddess Studies, cats, and crows, are representations of creation, as seen in their links to the Goddesses Bast and the Morrígan—both of whom make appearances in The Sandman series. Gaiman eschews negative stereotypes of these creatures—even seen in his beloved inspiration Tolkien.
132 Gaiman’s mice, paying homage to the pan-dimensional beings controlling our sector of spacetime, are the only creatures to know Coraline’s name—and are the only to properly warn her (Gaiman, Coraline, 16). For more about white mice, space time, and Gaiman’s inspirations, see Anthony Burdge’s discussion of Gaiman and Douglas Adams in this present volume.
133 Gaiman, Coraline, 84-86.
134 Gaiman, Coraline, 78.
135 Gaiman, Coraline, 118-120.
136 Gaiman, Omens, 271-272.
137 Gaiman, Omens, 208-209.
138 Ibid.
139 Gaiman, Stardust, 63-64.
140 Ibid.
141 Gaiman, Stardust, 67.
142 Gaiman, Stardust, 175-177.
143 Gaiman, Stardust, 122.
144 OED, online “carnadine”
145 OED, online “charnel, n1. and adj.1.”
147 Lewis, 101-102.
148 Lewis, 93.
149 Gaiman, Stardust, 101.
150 Gaiman, Stardust, 202-203.
151 Gaiman, Stardust, 122.
152 Gaiman, Stardust, 147.
153 Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 12-13.
154 Tolkien 1977, 33.
155 Lewis, 79.
156 Gaiman, Stardust, 239-241.
157 Gaiman, Stardust, 187-196.
158 Gaiman, Stardust, 235.
159 Gaiman, Stardust, 122.
160 Gaiman, Stardust, 204-205.
161 Gaiman, Graveyard, 109.
162 Gaiman, Graveyard, 111.
163 Gaiman, Graveyard, 112.
164 Gaiman, Graveyard, 111.
165 Gaiman, Graveyard, 110-111.
166 Gaiman, Graveyard, 105.
167 Gaiman, Omens, 114.
168 Gaiman, Omens,153.
169 Thurston, 153-155.
170 Ibid.
171 Gaiman, Omens, 153.
172 Thurston, 155.
173 Ibid.
174 Shlain, 367.
175 Gaiman, Omens, 156.
176 Gaiman, Omens, 179.
177 Gaiman, Omens, 74.
178 Ibid.
179 Ibid.
180 Ibid.
181 Gaiman, Omens, 122.
180 Gaiman, Omens, 123.
181 Ibid.
182 Gaiman, Omens, 181.
183 Ibid.
184 Ibid.
185 Gaiman, Omens, 195.
186 Clark, “The Witches of Thessaly,” 3.
187 Tully, “Witches of Ancient Greece & Rome,” 1.
&nb
sp; 188 Graves, The White Goddess, 62.
189 Graves, 128.
190 Graves, 166.
191 Gaiman, Game, 85.
192 Gaiman, Game, 84.
193 Gaiman, Kindly Ones, “Part Thirteen,” 20.
194 Gaiman, Game, 81-82.
195 Gaiman, Stardust, 175.
196 Gaiman, Kindly Ones, “Part Nine,” 20.
197 Gaiman, Game, 84.
198 Gaiman, Game, 86.
199 Gaiman, Game, 171.
200 Gaiman, Game, 133
201 Gaiman, Game, 133
202 Gaiman, Game, 87.
203 Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 1977, 113.
204 Gaiman, Anansi, 135-136.
205 Gaiman, Anansi, 31-33.
206 Gaiman, Anansi, 216; 234. 207 Gaiman, Anansi, 139. 208 Ibid.
209 Ibid.
210 Gaiman, Anansi, 290-91.
1 Shlain, The Alphabet versus the Goddess, 363.
2 Gaiman and Pratchett, Good Omens, 185.
3 For the sake of brevity, future references to The Malleus Maleficarum, save for its use in titles, will appear as Malleus.
4 Gaiman, “Instructions,” ll, 46-47.
5 McAvoy and Walters, Consuming Narratives, 3.
6 Roderick, Dark Moon Mysteries, 9.
7 Brauner, Fearless Wives & Frightened Shrews, 21.
8 Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, 45-47.
9 Bailey, Michael D. “The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft,” 125.
10 Bailey, Michael D. “The Feminization of Magic and the Emerging Idea of the Female Witch in the Late Middle Ages,” 120-126.
11 Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft, 3.
12 Gardner, Gerald. Witchcraft Today, 102.
13 Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online “Witch, n1.”
14 Thanks to Jason Fisher for the translation.
15 Exodus 22:18. KJV
16 Damico, Beowulf ’s Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition, 44.
17 Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 393.
18 Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess, 189.
19 Gimbutas, 209-210.
20 Ibid.
21 Gimbutas, 210.
22 Brauner, 15.
23 Thurston, Witch, Wicce, Mother Goose, 22-33.
24 Thurston, 17.
25 Thurston, 34.
26 Thurston, 31.
27 Thurston, 42.
28 Brauner, 16-17.
29 Ibid.
30 Thurston, 45.
31 Brauner, 36.
32 Ibid.
33 Brauner, 62.
34 Ibid.
35 Gaiman, Fragile, 223.
36 Gaiman, Fragile, 226-227.
37 Gaiman, Fragile, 228.
38 Brauner, 42-44.
39 Gaiman, Fragile, 117.
40 Gaiman, Fragile, 113.
41 Ibid.
42 Gaiman, Fragile, 114.
43 Gaiman, Fragile, 115.
44 Ibid.
45 Brauner, 36.
46 Gaiman, Fragile, 121.
47 Gaiman, Fragile, 119.
48 Gaiman, Fragile, 129.
Fables and Reflections:
Doubles, Duality, and Mirrors in the Fiction of Neil Gaiman
Samuel Brooker Doubles pervade literature. They haunt the Gothic as doppelgängers, where movement behind mirrors and manifestations of the twisted unconscious provide fodder for psychoanalysis. They lend shape and structure to superhero and fantasy fictions, acting as conceptual bedrock for titanic struggles between diametrically opposed factions,1 not to mention perfectly matched nemeses, polarized alien species, and shadowy organizations who parallel their real-world counterparts. Borrowing as he does from each of these traditions, Gaiman’s work inevitably reflects these ideas, which we will explore through deities with many faces, the nature of twins and dual identities, Gothic ideas of nemesis and shadow, and the question of mirrors.
Myths with a Thousand Faces: Three-In-One Works of mythological reduction like Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces suggest that certain archetypal figures will emerge in any mythological system, though they will be dressed in the culturally appropriate trappings of the community from which they stem and is an idea sharing much with the psychoanalytic theory of Jungian Archetypes. To better understand Campbell’s hypothesis, let us first look at The Endless from Gaiman’s comic series The Sandman. They are seven ‘anthropomorphic personifications’ who sit at a level beyond gods. In the language of taxonomy, we can think of them as super-types, comparable to a Kingdom in biology — they have no parent. Beneath each, like the branches of a family tree, are its subtypes, figures that human (and alien) imaginations created as representation of the super-type. So Anubis, Thanatos, Yana, and Charon can each be thought of as a subtype of Death, the super-type. One way of understanding this system is through the Mesopotamian god and patron of Babylon, Marduk.
In “The Fifty Names of Marduk,”2 Andrea Seri quotes numerous earlier works that detail the fifty names by which the god Marduk was known: Barashakushu, who works miracles; Tutu, who silences weeping, etc. These are not nicknames for the same individual: when Marduk works a miracle you are served by Barashakushu; when Marduk comforts you, you are comforted by Tutu. So it is with The Endless. In Preludes and Nocturnes, Dream appears in an entirely different aspect (and under the name L’Zorill) when he meets Martian Manhunter. Similarly in Death: The High Cost of Living, when Death takes the form of Didi —on the one day a century she spends in human form — her own Death is there to destroy her. As Gaiman puts it, “we perceive but aspects of the Endless, as we see the light glinting from one tiny facet of some huge and flawlessly cut precious stone.”3
Each subtype often has its own set of subtypes. Odin, whom Shadow meets at the end of American Gods, is not the Wednesday with whom he traveled through the rest of the book, though they are the same god. In Anansi Boys a young boy, divided in two after breaking a neighbor’s orb, grows up as two separate people—one a playful demigod, the other a retiring, stoic businessman. Only upon the death of their father do they meet again, each influencing and changing the other until eventually their personalities converge (or swap), creating two more ‘balanced’ individuals. As aspects of a whole, they are not complete: the demigod too capricious and destructive, the banker too timid and retiring. Charles Nancy and Spider are thus facets of one being, facets that together embody the supertype. In some cases, the subtypes seem to be interchangeable, as in the case of the Fates, Furies or — as they are known in Preludes and Nocturnes — Three-In-One. Never seen apart, these three figures are interchangeable, but when they wear a particular aspect — Maiden, Mother, Crone—they seem to embody that character; witness how their speech patterns change to suit the character which they are playing (maternal, playful) when they come to comfort/coerce Lyta Hall into invoking them in their guise as The Kindly Ones. So we have a super-type — the Three-In-One — whose subtypes include Fates (prophetic), Furies (vengeful), and others, each subtype containing three interchangeable characters: Maiden, Mother, Crone.
An additional layer of complexity emerges in Eve, who lives in a cave in the Dreaming. In “A Parliament of Rooks” she tells the story of the Lilim, Adam’s three wives, of whom she is a personification. These clearly mirror the Fates in the model of Maiden-Mother-Crone. One-WhoIs-Three-Who-Mirrors-Three. Eve’s contention that all men have, after a fashion, only married once not only returns us to the idea of an archetypal marriage, but also creates the One-Who-Is-Many-And-Three-WhoMirrors-Three: an impressive edifice of mirroring. These kinds of intermythological parallels are a staple of Gaiman’s work. Lord Susano-o-noMikoto, for example, becomes Loki’s target because Loki doesn’t like Storm gods, despite the source of his dislike — Thor – belonging to a different pantheon. Later, in The Kindly Ones, Loki himself befriends Puck because they are both tricksters. This hints at super-types (Storm god, Trickster), which exist outside t
he usual fraternity of common origins; despite being from Japan and Scandinavia respectively, the nature of a storm-god unites Lord Susano-o-no-Mikoto and Thor.
To explore this idea in more depth, let us explore Death as double, metonym, and archetype.
Myths with a Thousand Faces: Death as Metonym The fetch, sometimes conflated with the psychopomp, is a double seen as a sign of impending death. 4 Psychopomp, in turn, comes from the Greek psychopompus meaning ‘guide of souls,’ which describes persons or beings responsible for escorting newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Psychopomps make several appearances in Gaiman’s fiction — the gigantic Jackal god Anubis who weighs Shadow’s heart in American Gods, for instance, or The Sandman’s Charon, the boatman who carries Orpheus across the Styx and Acheron. There is even a city of Psychopomps, the necropolis Litharge. Gaiman suggests that they emerge from a central, universal constant called simply Death. In this respect, mythic characters may be seen as functioning at the level of metonym.
A metonym is a part standing in for the whole. For example, the phrase sword and sorceryis a metonym, representing the entire fantasy genre. Metonyms are often unfair and irrelevant, as they define something in a narrow way. In the same way, the aspects and images of Death as portrayed in Gaiman’s fiction are not to be considered Death per se, but as parts of a totality. This metonymic strategy has a more specific name – synecdoche – by which something is understood by perceiving facets of it.
An interesting exploration of this comes in Death: The High Cost of Living, in which Death has temporarily taken on the guise of Didi, a girl created to allow her to experience being alive. In the book Didi is pursued (and captured) by The Eremite, who steals her symbol and traps her in a basement. It is here that we see Death experiencing both remorse and anger, emotions at odds with her normally upbeat disposition.
The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman Page 23