(A talk given at fundraisers in the 1990s for organizations helping children in crisis. The speech was written long before the events of September 11, 2001. Since then, of course, many Americans have reevaluated the role of the hero.)
 |
| Detail of "Go West!" © 1976, by Brian Froud |
I discovered this at a professional gathering of writers, when asked about my latest book, an anthology titled The Armless Maiden. I explained that it is a collection of stories exploring the subject of child abuse. An awkward silence ensued, and then a colleague enlightened me. The subject of abuse is no longer "hot," he assured me; it is "yesterday's news."
Royalties from The Armless Maiden will aid the work of a shelter for children in crisis and their families located in Tucson, Arizona, as well as several other children's organizations. As in most such shelters across America, the Tucson shelter is filled to capacity each night. These desperate children do not know that they have become "yesterday's news;" that talk show audiences have grown tired of them; that newspaper readers have heard it all before. Yes, America has grown bored with victims. We want people to buck up now and stand on their own two feet. From the floors of a congress obsessed with teenage mothers to the pages of the New Yorker magazine (where critic Arlene Croce refused to review a dance piece which included AIDS-infected men and women), the message is clear: Stop whining. We're tired of victims, and victims' art.
But it's my belief that we've got the language all wrong. These aren't victims we're discussing, but heroes. Ordinary men, women and children struggling against overwhelming odds. Some will triumph and some will fail, but that battle remains a heroic one. And heroes have been a central subject of the arts since the dawn of time.
It was to address this very confusion of terms that I put together The Armless Maiden, an anthology using fairy tale themes in fiction (for adult readers), exploring the dark side of childhood's passage. Just as the symbolic figures in nightly dreams reflect the realities of our waking life, the symbols to be found in fairy tales and myths (which are the collective dreams of entire cultures) provide useful metaphors for grappling with the hard truths of our existence. These old tales have much to say about heroism; about how one finds the courage to fight and prevail against adversity. They are tales of children abandoned in the woods, of daughters who are handed poisoned apples or pressured to enter their fathers' beds, of sons who hack off their sisters' limbs or are sold to the devil themselves.
The old tales, which were often dark and brutal, were not considered mere children's stories at all -- not until our own century, when the pendulum of adult literary fashion swung sharply toward novels of strict realism, and oral tales (associated with the lower classes, and with women) were banished to the nursery. At that point the tales were cleaned up, simplified, and watered-down for children's ears, so that many of the fairy tales we know today are but pale copies of the originals. It is significant that at a time when we have dismissed the role these ancient stories might have in our modern lives (a role which Joseph Campbell has so eloquently expressed in The Power of Myth), we are also experiencing cultural confusion about the role of the hero. Actors and the superstars of commercial sports -- not gifted teachers or tireless social activists -- are whom we revere. Wealth and celebrity are our measures of stature; goodness, integrity, commitment are not. (Just listen to how old-fashioned those three words sound today.)
Yet these latter virtues are the qualities to be found in the heroes of old fairy tales. They were not about passive Cinderellas and Beauties and Little Mermaids who wait for a square-jawed Prince to save the day. In the older versions of fairy tales, many of the most powerful stories tell variations of one archetypal theme: a young woman or man beset by grave difficulties must set off through the Dark Woods alone, armed only with quick wits, clear sight, persistence, courage, and compassion. It is by these virtues that we identify the heroes; it is with these tools that they make their way through the woods and emerge on the other side. Without these tools, no magic can save them; they are at the mercy of the wolf and the wicked witch.
Those of us who survive violence or sexual abuse in childhood and have gone on to create rich lives for ourselves are following in just such archetypal footsteps. We are active, not passive. We are verbal, not silent. We become the heroes of our own lives and that journey is our great triumph -- even if in real life, like in the oldest fairy tales, a happy ending is not guaranteed. While one remains in the grip of the wolf (the abuser, the molester, the alcoholic), that is the time the word "victim" might apply. But to survive such peril, to move past it, to transcend it -- that is a hero's journey. And that journey is, always has been, and always will be, a story worth re-telling.
To diminish such stories with the label "victims' art" is to diminish the power of creation itself, our ability to transform darkness into light, pain into wisdom, straw into gold. Victims (like our helpless modern version of Cinderella) are passive, powerless creatures. Heroes (like the fiesty, clever, angry girl in the older Cinderella tales) are active, purposeful agents of change -- for themselves and the world around them. Many of us have made the hero's journey through the Dark Woods of a troubled childhood and on to brighter lands beyond. We need not be ashamed of having travelled those roads, or of remembering the journey when we come to make art -- no matter what is labelled unfashionable. Fashions change. And art remains.
We must also remember that the hero's journey is one that is never really done. For all of us who emerged from that dark forest, there are times we must head back into the trees -- only now we've a different role to play. This time we must be the good witch, the fairy godmother or the animal guide: the one who waits by the side of the road, ready to light the way for those young heroes who struggle on behind us.
Copyright © 1995 by Terri Windling. This text may not be reproduced without permission.
