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to improve his own social position. But salvation comes when the Marschallin, the central figure of the story, shows that she is not a Dark Mother who wishes to hold onto her `son-lover' at all costs. It is she who cunningly masterminds the overthrow of the Dark Rival, in such a way as to open the eyes and heart of the Dark Father to the hero and heroine's true love. The opera comes to its moving climax as the Marschallin surrenders sadly but gracefully to the need for life to flow onward into a new generation, and she hands over Octavian to his true `other half'. Like Calypso relinquishing Odysseus, she thus shows herself to be the Light Mother-figure who guides the hero forward to his manly destiny when the time is right.

Die Meistersinger

In Die Meistersinger the focus of the story is not on the `Mother-Son' part of the overall drama but on the `Father-Daughter' relationship. When in the opening scene the young hero and heroine meet in church and begin to fall in love, we see all the signs of a new centre of wholeness beginning to form (emphasised by the setting and solemn holy music). But each has a long way to develop before they can be united. Eva is still under the shadow of her father, although he has promised to release her to the hero who proves his worthiness by winning the great song contest. Walther still has to prove his manhood, and he takes the first step by trying to enter the city's ruling body and centre of masculine authority, the Guild of Mastersingers, which has fallen under the dark influence of the order-obsessed Beckmesser. Walther is ruled out of order by his Dark Rival, and only Hans Sachs observes that Walther has all the potential for wholeness. He merely needs a little more maturity to control his abounding power and life.

As the great contest draws near we see the psychological crux of the story, when the still immature Eva clings fearfully to Sachs, hoping that somehow, if she has to marry anyone, it can be him; she is still reluctant to cut her tie to the protective, fatherly presence of an older man. But like the Marschallin pushing Octavian forward to manhood, Sachs urges the heroine forward to meet her proper feminine destiny. Finally Walther emerges in his true colours, demonstrating both his inner feminine through the incomparable beauty and truth of his song, and his mastery by winning the contest. All egocentricity has been transcended, symbolised by the sight of the humiliated Beckmesser being laughed off the stage. Walther and Eva can step to centre-stage, joined in perfect wholeness. And the opera ends on a hymn of praise to the wise father-figure Sachs who has guided the whole drama to its proper, life-renewing conclusion.

Middlemarch

In fact it is not until we come to examples of the Comedy plot by women writers that we see this particular `Father-Daughter' aspect of the overall picture explored in proper depth. The story of Middlemarch (like that of Jane Austen's Emma) is entirely centred round the long struggle of its heroine to break free from the dominance of the dark masculine which threatens to stifle her own inner, life-giving femininity. The intellectual Dorothea Brooke falls for the dried-up old fatherfigure Casaubon, imagining that she will be able to live happily in a continuing `Father-Daughter' relationship with her husband, acting as the dutiful amanuensis serving his lofty intellectual ambitions. But already we see the more sensitive, artistic Will Ladislaw appealing unconsciously to the life and femininity within her; just as we see her discovering that Casaubon's outward parade of scholarship is just a lifeless, egocentric sham, a self-deceiving illusion, a mental labyrinth without Ariadne's thread. After Casaubon's death, leaving on her the curse by which he attempts to keep her imprisoned in his shadow forever, the rest of the story shows Dorothea gradually coming to terms with her inner feminine. Gradually, despite the curse, she escapes from Casaubon's deadening shadow, until finally the moment of `recognition' arrives, when she and Ladislaw can openly