The Abject Female – Lilith, Pandora, Darkchylde

The she-monster's hardly a new phenomenon. The idea of a female, untamed nature which must be leashed, or else will wreak havoc, closely reflects anthropocentric and mythological encounters with monsters (Warner, 1994, p4)

Darkchylde, Lilith, and Pandora are three examples of the abject female. The abject disturbs identity, system, order; does not respect borders, positions, rules' (Kristeva, 1982, p4). The 'possessed or invaded' monstrous body is inherently tied to abjection because, as Creed succinctly argues, it transgresses the boundary between self and other (1993, p32) and therefore does not respect borders or identity. The figure of the 'uncontrollable' female has been propagated through such mythological figures as Lilith and Pandora. The character of Ariel in the comic Darkchylde is just one representation which this mythical female archetype has metamorphosed. The mythological female figures of Lilith and Pandora also provide a co-existent site of abjection and the monstrous.


Lilith

In Jewish mythology Lilith is Adam's first wife before Eve. Her only appearance in the Christian Bible of today is in Isiah 34:14, where she is referred to as 'the night creature' who meets with 'the howling creature'. There are varying accounts of Lilith's history but most concur that she wouldn't lie beneath Adam due to her belief that they were created equally from the dust of the earth. Lilith and Adam argued about this equality, with Lilith finally retreating to the Red Sea. God sent three angels to return Lilith to Adam, however when they found her, she would not return, stating that death would be preferable to submission. The consequence of her defiance was that one hundred of her demon offspring would be killed each day. Lilith then proclaimed that she would kill newborns – boys up to eight days after birth, girls up to twenty – except those that were protected by the names of the three angels.

Eliezer Segal (1995) posits Lilith's story as originating in a medieval book called The Alphabet of Ben-Sira which seems designed to upset the sensibilities of traditional Jews. In particular the heroes of the Bible and the Talmud are frequently portrayed in the most perverse colours. Segal writes he cannot rule out that, along with an 'impious digest of risqué folk tales' or a 'polemical broadside aimed at Christians', The Alphabet of Ben-Sira may have been an anti-Jewish satire. He claims that through bad scholarly studies, Lilith ended up in the Jewish Midrash (the canon of works that are written to elucidate and explain Bible stories) without her origin being questioned. Even as a story Lilith becomes abject in transgressing storylines and not staying in her place. Angelo Rappoport in his Ancient Israel: Myths and Legends describes Lilith as 'long haired and winged' (1990). A further interesting complication posits Lilith as the Queen of Sheba who is beautiful from the waist up but from the waist down is ugly and hairy, and possibly also male! (Khephera,1997). This simple gender reversal harks back to the idea that for a female to hold any sort of power or agency, she must be either be hiding something ugly or be a male in disguise.


Pandora

Pandora is the first woman of Greek mythology and, like Lilith, is a woman whose desire for freedom and autonomy positions her as transgressing the boundaries of patriarchal law. Created by the Greek gods from earth and water as the price paid for Prometheus' theft of fire, Zeus directed the gods to give Pandora the face of the eternal goddesses; the skills of weaving; a desire that wears out the body; a mind of a treacherous nature; and lies, flattery and disloyalty in place of a heart. As she is made of many parts, Pandora can be described as 'the ambiguous, the composite' (Kristeva, 1982, p4). She is 'the bane of men, a destroyer of civilization as powerful as fire' (Young-Eisendrath, 1995, p4). Pandora's greatest 'gift' to the earth was her discovery and subsequent opening of a jar (later to become a box) which unleashed death, disease, evils and all the troubles of mankind. Hope is the only spirit that remained on closure of the jar. Before Pandora there was no evil, laborious work, or sickness. Thus with the opening of the jar Pandora divides the Gods and man with mortality bringing to mankind 'the ultimate defeat, death itself' (Young-Eisendrath, 1995, p5). Her beauty is powerful as fire but based on lies and deceit (Young-Eisendrath, 1995, p5) exemplifying Kristeva's theory of abjection beautifully, being 'immoral, sinister, scheming and shady' (1982, p4).


Darkchylde

Pandora and Lilith are the progenitors of a genetic line of abjection that leads to Ariel. Darkchylde is the story of seventeen year old Ariel Chylde who lives with her abusive father, Robert. Of her mother we only know that she "left" when Ariel was very young, although the assumption is that she's dead. Ariel is the possessor of the Darkchylde giving her the ability to transform into demons from the Nightmare Realm. These generally manifest when she or people close to her are threatened with harm. When the threat has been neutralised, Ariel and the demon separate. Ariel regains her human form and the demon scarpers back to the nightmare realm. To complicate matters, Kauldron, a human exile from the nightmare realm, has taken control of several demons before they have had a chance to return to the Nightmare Realm. Ariel must then save herself and her town from Kauldron and the demons under his control. Ariel's first transformation into a monster occurs during an incestuous attack by her father which ends when Ariel kills him. She is then helped by Perry, a male love interest, and his father Jack, a bigwig in the government agency SENTRY that deals with strange phenomena. After Ariel's second transformation she's taken to SENTRY headquarters and subjected to experiments and tests (for her own good, of course). However, Ariel escapes with the help of Jack, Perry and three sympathetic demons from the nightmare realm – Sage, War and Piece. As it happens, Sage is the spiritual representation of Ariel's dead mother, and as her name suggests, is a voice of wisdom and guidance. By the end of the comic Ariel has wreaked bloody carnage on most of the characters and the town of Salem; actions that lead to her exile.

Obvious comparisons can be drawn between the three characters', long hair, wings and beautiful outward appearance, but the theme of woman as harbinger of death, and the abject nature of their creation, are much more striking parallels. Ariel's outwardly shy and 'beautiful' appearance serves to hide the devouring monster who is 'out of place', an 'impossibility', and a somatic symptom of cultural ideals of women. She is a 'monster' who brings pain, suffering and destruction to patriarchy and phallocentric society. Kristeva's description of abjection illustrates Ariel's metamorphosis into monstrousness beautifully:

A massive and sudden emergence of uncanniness, which, familiar as it might have been in an opaque and forgotten life, now harries me as radically separate, loathsome (1982, p2).

The emergence of the monstrous in Darkchylde draws heavily on violent, birthing images. In fact as Ariel and demon separate, Ariel actually gives 'birth' to demons (like Lilith). Ariel describes her own metamorphosis into a monster:

it's something quite close to hell having your bones twist, snap and change shape. Having your skin stretch until it feels like it's going to rip, right as your blood reaches its boiling point. In many ways it isn't like dying and being born again… it is dying and being born again (Queen, 1999, p120).

Ariel monstrous birth of herself as demon is a violent act of expulsion through which her nascent body tears itself away from the matter of her maternal insides (Kristeva, 1982, p101). The above passage is Ariel's description of her final transformation in the comic, where we actually see Ariel give violent birth to herself as monster. This scene is pivotal as Ariel instigates the change to monster herself, a symbolic transformation from victim to aggressor and therefore in a second and more personal way, is imbricated in the process of 'becoming', as Kristeva explains:

it is thus that […] "I" am in the process of becoming an other at the expense of my own death. During that course in which "I" become, I give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit. Mute protest of the symptom, shattering violence of a convulsion (Kristeva, 1982, p3).

The monstrous body in Darkchylde exhibits the abject qualities of border transgression and violent birth (the maternal body as it transgresses bodily boundaries), occupying the site of the threatening abyss, marking the subject's place of birth and obliteration, and which continually threatens to draw them back in (Grosz, 1986, p110). This concept is made tangible in the descriptive narration of Ariel's transformation:

Inside her soul Ariel feels a deep and terrible abyss yawn wide… and something wicked in the darkness smiles and reaches out to her (Queen, 1999, p53).

Ariel experiences abjection at its height when she finds the impossible within; when she finds that the impossible – the ability to summon demons from inside herself – constitutes her very being (Kristeva, 1982, p5), exhibiting that at her centre she is abject. Ariel acknowledges this impossibility as something very evil lying beneath her skin, feasting on her soul for seventeen years (Queen, 1999, p88). This impossibility, this abjection, is what Kristeva identifies as 'not at all an otherness with whom I identify and incorporate, but an Other who precedes and possesses me, and through such possession causes me to be' (1982, p10). This possession results in abjection of the self, which is defined as:

the culminating form of that experience of the subject to which it is revealed that all its objects are based merely on the inaugural loss that laid the foundations of its own being. There is nothing like the abjection of the self to show that all abjection is in fact recognition of the want on which any being, meaning, language, or desire is founded (Kristeva, 1982, p5).

Ariel's loss of her mother is of course her inaugural loss. The subsequent desire to be with her mother produces Ariel as abject, and as what Kristeva relates as a somatic symptom: 'in the symptom, the abject permeates me. I become abject' (1982, p11). The symptom can be expressed as 'a language that gives up, a structure within the body, a non-assimilable alien, a monster' (1982, p11). Ariel's portrayal as a monster is thus a somatic symptom of the abject nature that underlies cultural and societal ideals of women.

After Ariel's first transformation, where she kills her father by 'spewing' fire from her mouth, Perry finds Ariel 'sick and vomiting… confusion and pain leaking from her eyes… she's beautiful and I couldn't be more terrified' (Queen, 1999, p38). This foregrounds Ariel's 'leaky' abject, (and therefore frightening) female nature, where body fluids refuse to stay in their place. When she's not a monster, Ariel is constantly crying, the first sign of her transforming is energy emitting from her eyes. She flows between forms, not respecting corporeal boundaries. Even the abstract emotions of confusion and pain become fluid, leaking out of her body. Her body is presented as 'out of control' in both human and monstrous forms. Grosz argues:

Can it be that in the West, in our time, the female body has been constructed not only as lack or absence but with more complexity […] as lacking not so much […] the phallus, but self-containment […] a formlessness that engulfs all form, a disorder that threatens all order? (1986, p203).

Ariel is unable to control herself when transforming, unable to contain her insides 'seeping' out into monstrous forms that threaten all order, specifically the symbolic order. Ariel's imprisonment by SENTRY is indicative of the symbolic orders attempt to contain the feminine and the abjection it exudes. This 'uncontrollable force' must be locked up and tested to see what happens, how boundaries are transgressed, to see how the abject woman can be controlled.

The monstrous body, the excessive and leaky body, a treacherous nature, a possessed body, a maternal/birthing body – all are somatic symptoms of the abject. This is an absolutely startling array of representations of the feminine in the one book and of the one female! The question needs to be asked, why is there so many symptoms displayed in the one woman? What is it about Ariel that commands such an array of abject representations? In contradistinction to her progenitors Lilith and Pandora, Ariel has the ability to generate life on her own without a male, making her all the more deadly. Ariel as monstrous woman is a signifier which effaces the father as signified (Shildrick, 1996, p5) disrupting the 'proper' the paternal origin, that is seen from as early as Aristotle as the single source of life. Ariel's ability to produce without a male is such an astounding and threatening feat (from a patriarchal, phallocentric point of view), that she must be offset with abject qualities. These representations also exhibit patriarchy's denial of real motherhood, and a real maternal ideal, as a positive role.

Ariel's abject nature reinforces her as 'other', in flux and unstable, which consequently reinforces the male as whole, clean, and stable. Ariel's frightening otherness undermines phallocentric ideals that position the male as a producer and active. Subsequently, Ariel is denied the right to exist in patriarchal phallocentric society, even in her 'pleasurable form', and must be sent away to 'somewhere'. When Ariel returns to her 'pleasurable form' she is instantly returned to her passive human state seeking Perry for direction and recognition. Agency is thus instantly transferred to the male and the symbolic order; a disappointing end to the hope that Ariel would actually benefit from her decision to give the villain Kauldron 'more than he could handle' (Queen, 1999, p118).

Ariel also has an interesting parallel with Ripley of the Alien movies. Mike Davis argues that when cheering on Ripley in Aliens, we're also unconsciously valorizing the symbolic [r]ejection of feminism because it has been so powerfully distorted in the figure of patriarchy's castration anxiety: the alien (2000). So too the narrative of Darkchylde has quite cleverly drawn us into its web where we have to agree that it's in Ariel's best interests to leave town, to be sent into exile. Like the figure of the Alien, Ariel as monster presents a twisted spectacle of feminine power that cannot be allowed to exist inside patriarchal boundaries. As Marina Warner argues all 'she-monsters must in one way or another be dispatched by the plot–or by the hero–as securely as any mythological dragon or monster of classical myth–preferably before they've perpetuated themselves' (1994, p3). As Warner so clearly shows, Ariel must be, and is dispatched by Perry, who is the hero only because he is the only male left who hasn't been killed! Produced as monster and as abject, Ariel is symptomatic of the fear that the symbolic order has of the feminine which must be 'kept in place'. Like Ripley, Ariel is the acceptable signifier of woman and the reassuring face of femininity; conceived from within patriarchal and phallocentric ideology (Davis, 2000).

Ariel is as a descendent of a long line of mythological abject females who unleash pain, suffering, and death onto the world, which is 'a curious reversal of the fact that women bring life into the world' (Young-Eisendrath, 1995, p4). These females are portrayed with qualities that are 'out of place' and that transgress their 'proper' boundaries. In short, at their centre they are abject. Ariel's abject nature is derived from her leaky, fluid body, her changing, maternal/birthing body, and her ability to transform into a monster. These qualities are used to offset her 'threatening' ability to generate life on her own. However this ability does not empower Ariel. As a figure who threatens patriarchal, phallocentric stability she must be dispatched, by any means possible. Ariel is thus relegated to the margins of society, exiled. The relentless attachment of the abject to the feminine in Darkchylde exposes patriarchal fear of an asymmetrical, irrational, wily, uncontrollable feminine power.


Reference

Creed, B. (1993).  The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis. London and New York. Routledge.

Davis, M. (2000). 'What's the Story Mother?': Abjection and Anti-Feminism in Alien and Aliens.' Gothic Studies 2.

Grosz, E. (1986). 'Language and the Limits of the Body: Kristeva and Abjection' in Grosz, E. (ed.)
Futur*fall: Excursions into Post-modernity. University of Sydney.

Khephera. (1997). Lilith. http://www.lilitu.com/lilith/khephframes.html

Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press.

Queen, R. (1999). Darkchylde: The Descent. La Jolla: Wildstorm Productions (DC Comics).

Rappoport, A. S. (1990). 'The Story of Lilith' in Ancient Israel: Myths and Legends.  http://www.lilitu.com/lilith/rappoport.html

Segal, E. (1995). 'Looking for Lilith' in Why didn't I learn this in Hebrew School? http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/950206_Lilith.html

Shildrick, M. (1996). 'Posthumanism and the Monstrous Body' in Body and Society. Vol. 2 (1). London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi. SAGE.

Warner, M. (1994). Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time. The Reith Lectures. Vintage.

Young-Eisendrath, P. (1995). 'Myth and Body: Pandora's Legacy in a Post-Modern World'.
http://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2004/PSY467/Young_Eisendrath_Myth_and_Body_Pandora_s_Legacy_in_a_Post_Modern_World.htm

Part 2 - Something Quite Close to Hell: The Monstrous Female in Darkchylde

Part 2 of 'Something Quite Close to Hell: The Monstrous Female in Darkchylde' investigates representations of the archaic mother and pre-oedipal in Darkchylde.

Read Part 1

Having argued as to why Ariel has become monstrous, now I would like to turn to what purpose she serves by taking up the position of ‘the monstrous feminine’. Ariel in her human form is the ‘acceptable’ form and shape of woman. When she transforms into a demon from the nightmare realm she becomes monstrous. Therefore the ‘pleasurable’ and ‘acceptable’ Ariel is needed to offset the visually horrifying aspects of her monstrousness. As a representation of the ‘monstrous-feminine’, Ariel exhibits characteristics that can be aligned with the feminine archetype of the archaic mother.

At this point it must be stated that there is some confusion over the figures of the pre-Oedipal and archaic mothers. Elizabeth Grosz in Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary (1992) and Mike Davis in his essay "'What’s the Story Mother?’: Abjection and Anti-feminism in Alien and Aliens" (1995) both refer to the pre-Oedipal mother as analogous to the phallic and archaic mothers. Barbara Creed however makes a distinction between these figures. She states that the pre-Oedipal mother is the mother of infancy, who is responsible for the early socialization of the child, while the archaic mother is the generative, parthenogenetic mother who gives birth to all living things and exists in all human cultures as the Mother-Goddess (Creed 24). Creed’s theorisation, I believe, is more useful as the pre-Oedipal mother, although a genderless ‘fantasy’ (the imaginary ‘paradise’ of the mother-child dyad), has a corporeal nature in the form of a person, whereas the archaic mother is a concept whose figure permeates the imagery of birth, primal scenes and the womb (Creed 19). The figure of the archaic mother is explored through the monsters into which Ariel transforms. When Ariel transforms she becomes a fetish object of the archaic mother carrying out the archaic mother’s wishes of reincorporating all to which she has given birth to through death and destruction.

The archaic mother is the parthenogenetic mother, the mother as primordial abyss, the point of origin and of end. She is the generative mother; the pre-phallic mother who exists prior to knowledge of the phallus (Creed 17-20). More importantly, the concept of the archaic mother does not depend on a concept of the masculine against which to define itself (Creed 27-8). This is because she exists before gender differentiation and does not need a masculine counterpart to exist. As the archaic mother exists only as a concept, Creed argues that the re-incorporating and destructive powers of the archaic mother are concretised in the figure of her offspring, the creature(s) whose mission is to tear apart and reincorporate all life (22). These offspring are represented in Darkchylde as the monsters into which Ariel transforms. These monsters are fetish objects of the archaic mother.

Freud defines the fetish as ‘a substitute for the woman’s (the mother’s) penis that the little boy once believed in and… does not want to give up’ (Freud 1961, Vol. XXIII, 152-3). According to Freud’s narrative, this takes place when the little boy sees, or simply realises, his mother or another close female figure, has no penis. He assumes that she has been castrated. He will deny this castration by replacing the penis his mother should have with the closest or first thing that he sees at the moment of realisation so as to deny that he can also be castrated. I use ‘he’ in this explanation because this is generally how the fetish is formed in the male child. Fetishism for the female child is quite different.

When the female child realises that her mother is castrated, she (eventually) recognises that she is also castrated. Comprehending that she can never have a penis of her own, and recognising that she cannot ‘own’ her father’s, she succumbs to the idea that her destiny is to have a child (preferably by her own father) as a replacement for the penis. Therefore a baby is what is deemed as her fetish object, her replacement penis. Hence the offspring of the archaic mother are referred to as fetish objects. But the offspring of the archaic mother are special because the archaic mother has no male counterpart, and therefore procreates without the aid of a male.

In the final battle of Darkchylde, Ariel transforms into a dragon where she kills the villain Kauldron and a host of other demons emerging from the nightmare realm. During this rampage Ariel also kills Perry’s father, Jack. Perry is Ariel’s love interest and he employs his father to help Ariel escape the authorities of the government agency SENTRY, for whom Jack works.

The death of Jack is seen to be an accident. However if we see Ariel in relation to the archaic mother, the situation can be better explained. Jack is in a position of authority at Sentry, a government agency interested in paranormal phenomena, and is also a father (reminding Ariel of her own father). Both aspects position him as a representative of the Law of the symbolic order. Killing Jack institutes a two-fold elimination of male dominance and power, first, by directly eliminating his paternal power. Second, with his father dead, Perry recognises the danger that Ariel poses to himself and sends her away, which eliminates him as a future representative of the Law. Ariel’s rampage of annihilation ensures that Ariel can never take up a position in the symbolic order, and as fetish object of the archaic mother, she doesn’t want to, which is in direct opposition to her ‘human’ desire to ‘fit in’. As a fetish object of the archaic mother, Ariel becomes a weapon which eliminates male, phallic dominance by reincorporating through destruction and death everything to which she has given birth.

Like the archaic mother, Ariel is constructed in opposition to, not separate from, the symbolic order. She is relegated to the margins to ensure the constitution of subjectivity and the law (Creed 26). Ariel states during the final battle of the comic:

I’ve invited all this rage that’s racing through me like a dark cancer, eating away at anything that remains of Ariel Chylde, and leaving in its place only the monster…and I feel my very essence threatened to be irreversibly consumed by the dragon…I almost welcome it… (Queen 129).

The invited rage that threatens Ariel’s essence is a veiled desire for oneness. This is best explained when Barbara Creed argues:

The desire to return to the original oneness of things, to return to the mother/womb, is primarily a desire for non-differentiation. If as George Bataille argues in Death and Sensuality, life signifies discontinuity and separateness, and death signifies continuity and non-differentiation, then the desire for and attraction of death suggests also a desire to return to the state of original oneness with the mother. As this desire to merge occurs after differentiation that is after the subject has developed as separate, autonomous self, it is experienced as a form of psychic death (28).

Consummation by the dragon, for Ariel, translates into a loss of self or ego, a ‘psychic death’ that is a desire for continuity and the loss of boundaries (Creed 30) where her desire to be one with the archaic mother would be realised. However Ariel is not allowed to ‘lose herself’, for to return to a oneness with the archaic mother would be to transgress the rigid ego boundaries of self and other which define phallocentric culture and patriarchal law. Instead Sage, the representation of Ariel’s pre-Oedipal mother, who as I have argued, exists in relation to the family and the symbolic order and is responsible for the socialisation of the child, scolds Ariel: ‘Ariel, no! You must relinquish this form at once or it will destroy you! And without your influence it will destroy us all!!’ (Queen 129). The tone of this quote is what distinguishes it as a socialising mother’s voice. She is not asking Ariel to relinquish her monstrous form, she is telling her – ‘you must relinquish this form at once…!’

Ariel has two desires. In her monstrous form as fetish object of the archaic mother she desires to return to a oneness with the archaic mother, not the body of the pre-Oedipal mother, because the monstrous form that Ariel occupies is a result of her unbroken link with the pre-Oedipal mother. When Ariel is in her human form she yearns for a return to the Imaginary where she recognises nothing other than herself and the body of her mother: ‘…lost in the amber glow of your eyes as you cradled me… I wish I could feel the gentle thrum of your heart as you held me to your warm breast’ (Queen 98).

What comes to pass is a power struggle between the archaic mother and the pre-Oedipal mother for control of Ariel. The archaic mother wants to overthrow the symbolic order, and as a fetish object of the archaic mother, Ariel will carry out her wishes of reabsorbing what she once birthed through a rampage of destruction. The pre-Oedipal mother, on the other hand, wants to uphold the Law of the symbolic order. Ariel is thus in a bind–to return to a oneness with the archaic mother where the psychic death of the self represents continuity and non-differentiation, or adhere to her pre-Oedipal mother and try to ‘fit in’ to a symbolic order that rejects her, and live a life that signifies a constant and seemingly endless time of discontinuity, marginalisation, separateness and lack.

While Ariel does return to her human form signifying the pre-Oedipal mother’s stronger hold, nothing is resolved. Ariel has killed and destroyed ensuring her no place in the symbolic order. Perry tells her ‘They’re going to hold you accountable. They’ll kill you Ariel…You’ve got to get out of here. Leave Salem forever!’, and that she has to ‘…find somewhere.’ (Queen 133).

It is telling that Ariel’s first metamorphosis into a monster occurs when she kills her father. Through her metamorphosis, Ariel decentres and reproduces herself. Decentralisation is the process of breaking away from the Western cultural habit of referring all experience to centres, beginnings, or origins of truth and being (Bersani 196). Bersani states it is in ‘parents and in brothers and sisters, the child finds himself by finding himself repeated’ (202) and it is only by smashing self reflections that one can decentralize themselves (216). Ariel kills her father in a pure and final act of anger and self preservation, destroying his paternal hold and power over her. In her father Ariel sees a repetition of herself, a centre, an origin. Killing her father is also an effort to break the cycle of abuse and the constant re-locations to different towns and schools. While moving from town to town finds Ariel always somewhere new, always ‘somewhere else’, it is really only a change of setting with the same script. Ariel’s decentralisation and transformation into monstrousness is different. It allows her to be ‘somewhere else’ within herself, signifying that she is not the origin or centre of what is happening to her, that she is not a killer, nor is she associated with her repetitive life, or her father. Put simply, she becomes an outsider looking in on herself.

The villain Kauldron is also a repetition and doubling of her father, of patriarchal law. In finally killing Kauldron, Ariel eliminates another repetition of her father and therefore herself (remembering in family members we find ourselves repeated). Each kill allows further decentralisation to that outside position but from which she must always return. This cycle is the attempt to eradicate the imprinted identity of the Law, something that must be done over and over. Ariel is thus caught in a cycle of endless repetition, from which she continually strives for release. This cycle involves men in positions of power trying to use or hurt her, who are, like Kauldron, repetitions of her father, and herself, who she will have to kill over and over again in an endless attempt to completely decentre herself, to be ‘somewhere else’.

Without going into the complexity of death and repetition too deeply, we can say that Ariel’s repetitive compulsion is a desire to restore an earlier state of things (Freud 1961 Vol. XVIII 36). Ellie Ragland argues, that this earlier state of things is the earliest state–that of being one, in the Imaginary, with the mother. She writes:

although the goal of repetition is to re-experience a prior […] satisfaction, the effort to recapture such lost moments depends on the fixations put in place to compensate for the loss of the primary object: that is, the illusion of a primordial oneness between child and mother (Ragland 89).

Ariel’s repetitive compulsion does three distinct things. First, her killing of patriarchal male figures becomes an attempt to eradicate the ‘Law-of-the-Father’ (and its imprinted identity) that intrudes upon the mother-child dyad. Second, Ariel also kills repetitions of herself when she kills these males, in the attempt to decentre herself. This action, we can also say, is an effort to be one with the mother, a return to the blissful state of the Imaginary.

Ariel’s initial loss of her mother becomes a ‘palpable void’ (Ragland 87) and it is this loss that drives her life. Her murderous actions against patriarchal male figures become Lacan’s object a, that which is used to try and fill this void. Ragland’s argument can again be applied to Ariel as she is:

repeating relations to objects whose crucial function of semblance is that of filling up an actual void. Thus human beings pursue objects that sustain fantasies, even though attaining an object of fantasy can never completely close the void (Ragland 87).

Ariel’s fantasy is that she will one day ‘fit in’ and this is most readily achievable in the Imaginary where she could never be an outsider, but again Ariel’s (unavoidable) actions only push this fantasy further away.

Ariel’s repetitive gothic storyline positions her as both sadist (one who inflicts pain on others) and masochist (one who inflicts pain on themselves), both dominated and dominator, at once submissive and assertive (Day 19). In short, a masochistic/sadistic catch-22. Her efforts to eliminate the repetition of herself that she sees in others leads only to situations that will induce her to kill more repetitions of herself in an endless cycle. Her life is the archetypal “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. Wherever Ariel goes she can never be free from patriarchal Law which she threatens, and which will always threaten her. Ariel remains, both inside and outside male society; romantically idealised and a victimised outcast (Eagleton 190) literally always relegated to ‘somewhere else’, decentralised, never able to just ‘fit in’.

References

Bersani, Leo. A Future for Astyanax. Columbia University Press, 1984.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

Davis, Mike. “What’s the Story Mother?: Abjection and Anti-Feminism in Alien and Aliens.” 1995 http://www.ac.uk/fac/arts/English/wip/dav3ii.html(Please Note: this link is no longer active. The essay can be found here in Gothic Studies 2 (2000): 245-56.)

Day, William Patrick. In the Circles of Fear and Desire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.

Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vols. Vol. XXIII (1937-39). London: The Hogarth Press., 1961.

—. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey. Vols. Vol. XVIII (1937-39). London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.

Queen, Randy. Darkchylde: The Descent. La Jolla: Wildstorm Productions (DC Comics), 1999.

Ragland, Ellie. Essays on the Pleasures of Death: From Freud to Lacan. Routledge, 1995.

Something Quite Close to Hell - The Monstrous Female in Darkchylde

Randy Queen's drawings of his scantily clad and vulnerable heroine, Ariel Chylde coupled with outrageous demons and monstrous violence made Darkchylde a massive seller. With the release of a new Darkchylde comic (albeit a joint Darkness issue) at this year's San Diego Comic-con it's seems appropriate to revisit the 1990s incarnation of Darkchylde in an academic format.

Part 1 positions how monstrosity is produced when, psychoanalytically, separation of mother and daughter fails.

Part 2 investigates representations of the archaic mother and pre-oedipal mother in Darkchylde.

Something Quite Close to Hell – The Monstrous Female in Darkchylde (Part 1)

The female body shares with the monster the privilege of bringing out a unique blend of fascination and horror (Braidotti 81)

In the 1990s superhero comics were beset by a plague of ‘bad girl’ titles. Fathom, Witchblade, Danger Girl, Painkiller Jane, Chastity, Glory, Avengelyne, Allegra, Lady Death, Pandora, Webwitch, Shotgun Mary, and Allura were but a few which clogged comic shop shelves. Some have kicked on, while most have mercifully been sent to the remainder bin. These characters were generally young and attractive, sexy, sexually vulnerable, but ultimately packed a mean array of weapons, powers and skills. Maybe they were ‘bad’ because they transgressed patriarchal boundaries, or because they were powerful and seductive at the same time.

Or maybe as Jessica Rabbit says, they weren’t really bad, they were just drawn that way.

Randy Queen’s Darkchylde (Wildstorm/DC) was one of the more popular ‘bad girl’ titles at the time. This essay uses Darkchylde to explore representations of the monstrous female, specifically the pre-Oedipal and archaic mothers. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis as a point of departure it investigates how the concepts of the Law-of-the-Father and the symbolic order are pivotal in the production of the monstrous woman in Darkchylde. Drawing from Barbara Creed’s (1993) work on the monstrous feminine, I will argue that Darkchylde’s main character, Ariel Chylde, represents a female body in rebellion against the symbolic order’s oppressive and marginalising structures.

Darkchylde is the story of seventeen year old Ariel Chylde who lives with her abusive father, Robert. Of her mother we only know that she “left” when Ariel was very young, although the assumption is that she’s dead. Ariel is the possessor of the Darkchylde giving her the ability to transform into demons from the Nightmare Realm. These generally manifest when she or people close to her are threatened with harm. When the threat has been neutralised, Ariel and the demon separate. Ariel regains her human form and the demon scarpers back to the nightmare realm via a portal. To complicate matters, Kauldron, a human exile from the nightmare realm, has taken control of several demons before they have had a chance to return to the Nightmare Realm. Ariel must then save herself and her town from Kauldron and the demons under his control.

Ariel’s first transformation into a monster occurs during an incestuous attack by her father which ends when Ariel kills him. She is then helped by Perry, a male love interest, and his father Jack, a bigwig in the government agency SENTRY that deals with strange phenomena.

After Ariel’s second transformation she’s taken to SENTRY headquarters and subjected to experiments and tests (for her own good, of course). However, Ariel escapes with the help of Jack, Perry and three sympathetic demons from the nightmare realm – Sage, War and Piece. We find out that Sage is the spiritual representation of Ariel’s dead mother, and as her name suggests, she is very much a voice of wisdom and guidance. By the end of the comic Ariel has wreaked bloody carnage on most of the characters and the town of Salem; actions that lead to her exile.

Investigating the monstrous females in this simple narrative begins by examining the pre-Oedipal phase. In Lacanian psychoanalysis the pre-Oedipal (as Freud describes it) or Imaginary phase of development consists basically of two terms: the child and the image of the other, which is usually the mother (Eagleton 165). Elizabeth Grosz states that as the child develops, this dyadic structure is disrupted by the father who represents ‘law, order and authority for the child’(1990 68). The father is a ‘Symbolic or imaginary father’, a representative of the Name-of-the-Father that stands for patriarchal ownership. Taking on the Name-of-the-Father positions the child beyond the structure of dual imaginary relations (Grosz 1990 47). Recognition of this ‘paternal metaphor’ charts the child’s entry into the symbolic order and the social world beyond the family structure (Grosz 1990 104). Therefore, the Name-of-the-Father signifies the ‘Law’ or Law-of-the-Father that is the wider set of social and sexual roles rules upon which the symbolic order rests and relies. Keeping this in mind, let’s examine Ariel’s relationship with her “father”, Robert.

Ariel is sexually abused by Robert who represents the ‘Law’ of the symbolic order. However Ariel has a deeper feeling that Robert isn’t her father at all. She says –

I usually just call him Robert. He hates it but “Dad” just doesn’t feel comfortable. It’s funny, sometimes I feel like he isn’t my real father at all, just a man with the title (Queen 23).

In relation to paternal authority, Jane Gallop writes:

What if in making love the father still remained the law, and the daughter were just passive, denied? The father’s law has so restructured the daughter and her desires that it is hard, well nigh impossible, to differentiate the Father (that is to say the Law) from the male sexed body. What if making love with the father were merely a ruse to get the impertinent daughter to give up her resistance to the law? (Gallop 78).

This quote presents an excellent explanation of Ariel’s incestuous relationship with her father. Her use of Robert instead of “father” or “dad” is a resistance to the Law. She sees past Robert’s ‘male sexed body’ denying him the recognition, the ‘patriarchal right’, he ‘deserves’ as an embodiment of the Law. Robert’s sexual abuse of Ariel is his attempt to quell her impertinent resistance to the Law.

At the end of the comic we find out that indeed Robert is not Ariel’s father at all, he is simply an agent of the Law. Thus the Law itself is positioned as Ariel’s “father”, which is embodied by the many different male characters in the comic. This also explains why there are so many male figures (Robert, Perry, Jack, Kauldron) in Darkchylde compared to the solitary Ariel. Each male is another representative of the Law trying to quell her resistance. As Gallop states precisely for our purposes:

the law of the father gives her an identity, even if it is not her own, even if it blots out her feminine specificity. To give it up is not a ‘simple’ matter. It must be done over and over (Gallop 78).

As Robert is not Ariel’s father, she eludes the Name-of-the-Father that is patriarchal ownership (the identity he has given her is not her own). However she is still imprinted with the identity of the Law (i.e.: she is ‘imprinted’ with the ideals of woman that phallocentric culture positions as ‘feminine’), and as will be shown, trying to ‘give up’ this imprinted identity, by eliminating repetitions of her father (and herself), is something that must be done ‘over and over’.

For Ariel, the first appearance of the Law-of-the-Father, embodied by her (symbolic) father Robert, necessarily coincides with the death of her mother. Ariel is quite literally divided from her mother’s body and wrenched from the Imaginary (the realm where there exists only the child and the body of the mother) into the Oedipal drama (where the child must recognise the Law-of-the-Father). Therefore Ariel’s recognition of the Law equates with death, and more importantly, the death of her mother. As happens in the Oedipal phase, after recognition of the Law, Ariel acquires a guilty desire to return to the Imaginary (to be one again with her mother). This desire that cannot be realised is unconscious and is compounded by coinciding with her mother’s death. Thus her Oedipal drama remains unresolved because once she has realised that she cannot be her father’s lover (complicated by his sexual abuse of her) she has no mother figure to turn to or with which to identify. Without a mother as role model she will find it hard to take up a female position in the symbolic order, which is compounded by the incestuous abusive relationship with her father, her shyness, and her constant relocation from town to town. These factors position Ariel as an outsider who stands out from the crowd. But despite this, she still longs to fit in, to be part of the symbolic order. 

To complicate matters further, Ariel’s monstrous and murderous rebellion against her father, where she refuses to be a passive subject to his abuse, positions her as a possessed female subject who refuses to take up her role in the symbolic order (Creed 38). Thus Ariel presents an interesting dichotomy – the passive victim who wants to be part of the symbolic order versus the aggressive monster ensnared within the passive victim who threatens the symbolic order from her marginalised position. To draw an analogy, Ariel is similar to the main character of the film Carrie (1976). Barbara Creed writes of Carrie: ‘on the one hand she is a painfully shy, withdrawn, child-like girl who just wants to be ‘normal’ like every other teenager, while on the other hand she has the power… to transform into an avenging female fury’ (78). Like Carrie, that which Ariel outwardly desires (to fit in) can never be attained due to her monstrous, ‘uncontrollable’, capabilities which threaten the symbolic order. But from where does Ariel’s monstrousness originate? To explain we must return to the site of the pre-Oedipal and Oedipal phases.

Freud states that the pre-Oedipal phase is far more important in women than in men. This is because the mother-child relation is a site for both the transmission and subversion of patriarchal values, where the archaic force of the pre-Oedipal, which although repressed, is also permanently preserved (Grosz 1990 149). But how can this be so? How is this mother-child relation preserved? Elisabeth Grosz again explains:

As Freud himself noted, the girl remains in contiguity with the pre-Oedipal period in ways that are barred for boys […] In the case of the girl, there is no clear-cut division between the pre-Oedipal and the oedipal; she occupies an oedipalised position only gradually and unsurely. Her oedipal complex may persist indefinitely or fade because of disappointments, rather than end through a dramatic repression. She thus remains in touch with the pre-Oedipal maternal continent (Grosz 1989 115).

Ariel’s mother died when Ariel was only an infant, as is denoted by her memories:

being lost in the amber glow of your eyes as you cradled me… as you held me to your warm breast, as I listened to stories of dark forest and houses made of gingerbread… I try to recall your face but no images come. Only feelings. Feelings of love and joy… (Queen 98).

This mother figure that Ariel speaks of is the pre-Oedipal mother, who exists in relation to the family and the symbolic order (Creed 20), and as is responsible for the early socialisation of the child.

Ariel’s mother dying may have been her way of refusing to submit to the symbolic order. Thus she also becomes monstrous, as both the monster and death signify a monstrous obliteration of the self, and both are linked to the demonic (Creed 30). This is significant as Ariel’s mother resides with the demons in the nightmare realm. Ariel in her monstrous rebellion follows her mother’s lead by refusing to recognise the paternal order and thus is also produced as monstrous (Creed 38).

Even though the link between Ariel and her mother should be completely severed through death, they remain linked shown through the appearance of the bird, Sage, Ariel’s “guardian angel”; the representation of her pre-Oedipal mother. This is made explicitly clear when Ariel says:

Little bird. Always appearing and disappearing at your leisure… with your cryptic warnings… the bird of light who always seems to know right when I need her… right when I need… her. M-mom? Mommy? (Queen 129).

Thus the source of Ariel’s monstrosity is, as Creed argues, the failure of the paternal order to ensure the separation of mother and child (Creed 38).

Read Part 2

Reference

Braidotti, Rosi. (1994). Nomadic Subjects. New York. Columbia University Press.

Creed, Barbara. (1993). The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis. London and New York. Routledge.

Gallop, Jane. (1982). Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Daughter’s Seduction. Macmillan Press.

Grosz, Elizabeth. (1986). 'Language and the Limits of the Body: Kristeva and Abjection' in Grosz, E. (ed.) Futur*fall: Excursions into Post-modernity. University of Sydney.

Grosz, Elizabeth. (1989). Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists. Allen and Unwin.

Grosz, Elizabeth. (1990). Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction. London and New York. Routledge.

Queen, Randy. (1999). Darkchylde Collected Edition: The Descent. DC Comics.