#the cleft

Roden Crater | Painted Desert, Arizona

Inktober #13 - Full of Stars I still haven't gotten past Riven, despite owning the last three Myst games. Those first two were the best for me. Even more so is the somewhat obscure novels, which I adored. My copy of The Book of Ti'ana has been read so many times through that I think one more is going to break its spine (and then woe is me, because the damn thing's sorely out of print and then I'll only have it as an ebook...). My favorite scene by far is when Atrus sees rain for the first time in The Book of Atrus, and when it fills the cleft with water and the reflection of the sky makes it look as if he could go swimming among the stars themselves. And then the desert afterwards, covered in flowers. That's what I thought of when I saw the word "teeming" as a prompt.

Doris Lessing's “The Cleft“ is set in ancient times (not specified when, only long ago, almost mythic times) when there was a race of people called the Clefts. The Clefts were our ancestors and, by Lessing’s description, were women who spent their days swimming and sometimes birthing children, which were female. They lived in giant, comfortable caves, which are a metaphor for wombs, since both have babies in them that are taken care of. But one day, a male baby was born and this threw the women into disarray; they were afraid of this new thing and quite disturbed, they would throw the male babies away, mutilate and castrate them (which invokes a Freudian image of a castrating mother) or keep them as pets, since they thought these babes are inferior to them, and should not have been born.

Immediately, this seems like a story of inversion. Historically, women were always subjugated by men and this novel changes that, portraying women as the “original” race, while men came afterwards, which further contradicts the Biblical and creationist viewpoint of Eve being made from Adam. It is not Eve that was made later as an afterthought, but rather that Adam was born from Eve. But, at the same time, women here are seen as cruel and ignorant, much like men were in the real world when it comes to the opposite sex; it was thought women are dirty and unholy during their menstruation cycle, any woman showing any sense of spirit and independence was being hunted, tortured, and killed on accusation that she is a witch, copulating with the Devil, and since a woman cannot work in labour during pregnancy, it was widely believed they are the inferior sex, etc. However, the women in the novel are portrayed as lazy, passive, without thoughts or curiosity, who do not see themselves as individuals and who want to maintain the status quo, while the men were adventurous, rash, brave, intellectual, inventive (they made their own huts, instead of living in caves like the Clefts did), etc. Since these women did not have a sense of individuality and spent most of their time half submerged in water, this seems like a metaphor of their non-individuality; the water is like the amniotic fluid, giving them substance and protection, but they are not “born” yet, as in their individuality is still to be born. Only once they leave these caves and shores will they start to think for themselves, which ends up happening with two women, Maire and Astre. But the act of leaving these caves is not the only thing that gave them their individuality, but rather the acts of copulation with the male population is what made them become Maire and Astre, individuals instead of parts of a mindless community. Another interesting thing is that these women, the Clefts, seem to be a lost link in the evolution between the humans of the earth and fishes (according to the aquatic ape theory which hypothesizes that humans came and evolved from the sea), since they look like amphibians from their description and lifestyle. They even believed they came from fishes; “that a Fish brought them from the Moon.  The Moon laid eggs into the sea…” which seems like gynogenesis.

Furthermore, the women were able to conceive a child on their own, but some of them having mated with the males seemingly lost the ability to birth children, needing men to have sex with them in order that the new offspring is born. However, the men, being adventurous, did not like to be needed, did not want to settle down, they wanted to explore the island and beyond and they put the lives of their offspring in danger by going on these expeditions around the island, which can be seen as a way of escaping their duties and responsibilities of being fathers. The women nag, the men do not want to admit the women are right, which can be seen in scenes were men are lost in the expedition, but the women are the ones who point the right way and get them back on track.

The word “cleft” has powerful symbolism connected to it. The Clefts are called that way because of their vaginas, they had a split between their legs. But also in the novel, a rock that had a crevice in it which was shaped as the female genitalia was called The Cleft as well, and that rock was where the Clefts sacrificed the younger members of their community. This hole was full of bones, invoking the images of vagina dentata, and it released toxic fumes that would intoxicate the men who the women, “the Old Shes”, wanted to kill, which would result in them falling in the hole, which is clearly a metaphor for either women having control over men using their genitalia, or men being obsessed with vaginas and female body in general. The men killed this old woman who wanted to kill them by splitting her head with a stone, so her head was cleft, further emphasizing this imagery. The men falling into The Cleft was intended to be a castration, being lost in the poisonous vagina that is the Cleft, which is a visual representation of Carl Jung’s archetype of the devouring mother. Furthermore, the Cleft is also the area in which the females lived in and progressed into adulthood, signifying their maturity, with more symbols of menstruation and maternity.

Lessing makes an interesting point writing this novel: it would seem that Lessing is sexist both towards men and women; to think the point of a woman’s existence is to have babies is misogynistic, but also to think that men only do and do not think and that they are only good for making babies is misandristic. But, Lessing is saying that men and women hold each other back, since they are dependent on each other. This can be seen later in the book where, even after the killing of the Old Shes and abandoning the old ways, there is still frequent conflict between the sexes. The females are led by Maronna, who wants to make biological survival and stability of the species (humans, both men and women) a priority, while her counter-part Horsa, who leads the males, wants to explore, to find adventure and better places to reside in. This can be connected to the real world, where indoor activities and the taking care of the offspring, ensuring the survival of the family line was the woman’s job, while men were always away from home, indulging in outdoor activities, with no care for the home, which they were a part of in their infantile stage.

To sum up, one can accuse Lessing of going on “a crusade against male human beings”, as Harold Bloom once did, but Lessing has always maintained her stance that she does not write feminist books. She is biased neither towards women nor men. Being a woman who was not afraid of political correctness, Lessing had no political bias writing this novel other than stating that women came before men did. More importantly, the novel explores women and men living together, existing alongside, needing and depending on each other. Because even with glaring physical differences, men and women are not that different, and when they are, it is something to be accepted and celebrated, not looked down up or discriminated against.

         References:

1.      Lessing, Doris. The Cleft. London: HarperCollins, 2007. Print.

2.      Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. London. Longman, 1987. Print.

3.      Verrier, Elwin. “The Vagina Dentata Legend” in British Journal of Medical Psychology. 1943. Vol. 19, pp. 439-453.

4.      Jung, Carl Gustav. Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Vol. 9. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. London: Routledge, 1991. Print.

[1] Aquatic ape theory – a theory that the ancestors of the modern humans were more aquatic in the past

[2] Gynogenesis - development in which the embryo contains only maternal chromosomes due to activation of an egg by a sperm that degenerates without fusing with the egg nucleus

[3] Vagina dentata – Latin for “toothed vagina”, describes a myth that vaginas contained teeth, which meant that sexual intercourse would result in injury or castration