The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [189]
Both these things, the physical and the mental, give an essential strength and firmness, a backbone and vigour to human life. Without them it remains weak, ineffectual, amorphous, chaotic, without discipline or direction, and it cannot survive. But in both its aspects the masculine is based on the principle of separation and division: the sense of power which enables one person or part to dominate over another; the sense of order which is rooted in the need to discriminate and to establish differences between one thing and another.
In both these respects the masculine is potentially hard and inflexible. And when we see a character possessed by the `dark masculine, we see him in the grip of either or both of these things, in a way which is egocentric and life-denying. The Tyrant or Dark Father is a bully who uses his power and strength in an aggressive, cruel way to impose his will on others. He may also be doing so to preserve an established structure of authority and hierarchy, like the unrelenting fathers of Comedy who refuse to allow their sons to marry girls of humble origins. They wish to maintain a certain limiting notion of order which does not allow life to flow: like Shylock who remorselessly pursues justice under the law, at any human price; or like Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger who is so obsessed by the traditional rules of singing laid down by the Mastersingers that he cannot see that Walther has created a song of exceptional beauty, simply because his vision is constricted to that which lies within the rules.
In other words, while the masculine stands for the two great principles of power and order, if these are dark and one-sided they can only be turned to deadening and divisive purpose. The power can be used ultimately only to crush and to destroy. The order is a dead structure which becomes suffocating and oppressive and cannot resolve into life.
But equally, when a hero has fallen into the grip of the `dark feminine, like Odysseus languishing on Calypso's isle, or Tannhauser enjoying the sensual delights of the Venusberg, or Antony ensnared by `the serpent of old Nile, we see him unable to become masculine enough. For the time being at least, he is not strong, disciplined or masterful enough to be a man. He has become beguiled into losing touch with his masculine power, he has become weak and dependent, no longer sovereign over his own actions. Worse still, his efforts to get in touch with the masculine in himself may become wild, rebellious and unresolved - like the increasingly desperate Don Jose, lashing out first at his victorious rival Escamillo, then fatally at Carmen herself; or the impotent, sexually frustrated Clyde, under the spell of Bonnie, trying to prove his manliness with the gun. If such a hero does have genuine masculine strength, the results when he falls under the sway of the `dark feminine' may be most catastrophic of all, as when the tough, successful general Macbeth succumbs to the lures of the `dark sisters' and his dominating wife: his strength is turned to dark ends, he kills the very thing he would like to become, the good legitimate king, the honourable bearer of true masculine authority, and becomes in consequence a Tyrant. In weaker men, their masculinity may remain all in the mind, as when little Kay first turns verbally aggressive and cynical and then, under the spell of the Snow Queen, sits all day spinning endless rational mental patterns of words and figures with ice splinters, but can never get them to resolve into the word `eternity'.
The only way the hero can achieve a completely triumphant resolution is by fully developing his masculinity in a way which is positive: and this means in perfect balance with his inner feminine. It is this which alone can bring masculine strength fully to life by giving it the vital ingredient of connection, of joining up: through feeling, which gives a link to others