The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [202]
In fact the most extreme form of this outwardly male character who works through the insinuating manner of the `dark feminine', trying to get a hold over the hero by pretending to be acting in his interests, represents the ultimate type of dark figure in stories, the Tempter. This figure, who is extremely dangerous because he is so deceptive, is most commonly seen in Tragedy. An obvious example is Mephistopheles in Dr Faustus, pretending to offer Faustus all sorts of illusory powers and the ability to know and see `hidden things' (i.e., to see whole), when in fact he is appealing only to the weak, deluded Faustus's ego and seeking to destroy him. lago is a similarly devilish example, pretending to be serving Othello's best interests, but in fact seeking only to trap and destroy him. Lord Henry Wootton plays the same role in luring Dorian Gray onto his path to self-destruction.
The Tempter is in fact the supreme `dark opposite' in stories because he stands at the ultimate pole from the state of wholeness. He represents in its most extreme form egotism pretending to be its opposite. As such, if the hero is weak in judgement and self-control, he can become the most dangerous adversary of all.
In those stories where the central figure is the heroine, the emphasis of the challenges presented by the dark figures is reversed. When a heroine comes up against the `dark masculine', like Leonore against the Tyrant Pizarro or Portia against Shylock, it is her strength which has to be called primarily into play, her `masculine' qualities (although coupled with an unshakeable hold on her femininity). When she is up against the `dark feminine', like Cinderella faced by her wicked stepmother and the ugly sisters, it is her own genuine femininity, her innocence, beauty and goodness of heart, which is the most obvious measure of her superiority, and it is this which in the end attracts the `light masculine' figure of the hero to release her. But, like the hero, the heroine may also come up against that most `inferior' figure of all, a male figure working through his `dark feminine' wiles, like St John Rivers trying to lure Jane Eyre into a marriage which we know would first imprison and then kill her. St John Rivers is the Tempter as Dark Other Half, like those weak, treacherous false wooers who attempt to seduce several of Jane Austen's heroines, or Anatole Kuragin, the would-be seducer of Natasha in War and Peace. The Tempter, as the ultimate `dark opposite' of the state of wholeness, is thus just as much the most dangerous enemy to the heroine as he is to the hero, and like him she needs to summon up all her potential for wholeness to resist him; just as does Jane Eyre does in her final struggle to free herself from succumbing to Rivers.
The four basic figures
What we thus see is just how directly our human need to imagine stories is related to the most central instinctive drive in human life. Each of us born into a family unit soon becomes conscious that we are the third and youngest of a `three': `Daddy, Mummy and me', the primal triad. We are aware that, as the `third' of that `three, we are the central focus of a process of growth and transformation which naturally preoccupies us more than anything else in the world. From this beginning, as we