The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [187]
On the other hand, where the hero in other types of story must reject that other great female figure, the `Dark Other Half, the Temptress, the tragic hero does the opposite. This is precisely where the seeds of so many tragedies are sown, as the hero succumbs to the bewitching embraces of the `dark feminine': as Antony is bewitched by Cleopatra, Don Jose is bewitched by Carmen, Macbeth is bewitched by Lady Macbeth, Jules and Jim are bewitched by Catherine, Clyde is bewitched by Bonnie. It is the `dark angel' who wins in the battle for the tragic hero's allegiance. And the result is not just that we see the hero losing touch with the true feminine value within himself. He is no longer a fully masculine figure either. As we see in all these examples, he has become literally un-manned. And so we see it confirmed, by this somewhat roundabout, negative route, how in order for the hero to succeed he must not only be in touch with the true feminine value within himself: he must also be truly a man, strong, alert, fully sovereign over himself and his actions. It is a definition of the hero of Tragedy that he always in some essential way shows himself to be weak. He gives way, he surrenders the masculine part of himself to some unreal fantasy. He is thus deficient both on the feminine side of himself and on the masculine. And one of the supreme rules of the way that stories work is that ultimately these two must go inextricably together. It is impossible fully to develop and make positive the one, without fully developing the other. Where one is deficient, so are they both.
We see this reflected in those two great stories centred on a tragic heroine, Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary. It is obvious that the husbands of both Anna and Emma Bovary are unimaginative, unfeeling men who lack the inner feminine which could form a living bridge to the feminine in their wives. But equally they are not fully men either. The work-obsessed bureaucrat and the failed provincial doctor are dried-up husks of undeveloped masculinity - and it is because they are inadequate on both the masculine and feminine sides that their unhappy, frustrated wives become prey to the `Dark Other Half' who seems to promise all the fierce passion, mingling masculine strength and the feminine softness of love, which they lack in their marriages. But in each case the `dark other' turns out to be an elusive phantom, spun largely out of the heroine's own fantasies. Finally, irrevocably cut off from the true, life-giving feminine within herself, the heroine is left wild, deranged and hopelessly alone, to throw herself into the oblivion of death.
And what happens in those tragedies of partial redemption, where there is an eventual turn upwards towards the light? We see such varied heroes as King Lear, Tannhauser and Samson all initially bewitched by the `dark feminine' - by the false Goneril and Reagan, by Venus, by Delilah - to the point where they are left unmanned and weak. But then in King Lear, even though it is too late to call back the monsters unleashed by his initial weakness, we see Lear first getting back in touch with his own inner feminine through his reconciliation with Cordelia; then, in the closing stages of the play, assuming once again some of his old kingly, manly stature. He may no longer be outwardly a king, but he is discovering a new sovereignty over himself. Tannhauser, through the ordeal