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Teya Rosenberg ROMANTICISM AND ARCHETYPES IN RUTH NICHOLS’S SONG OF THE PEARL W eter Hollindale suggests that “since 1970 a highly intelligent and demanding literature has emerged which speaks with particular directness to the young adult mind” (86). He calls this literature “the adolescent novel of ideas” and, borrowing a phrase from Betsy Hearne, says that such novels “grow the mind a size larger” (86). Song of the Pearl (1976), by Ruth Nichols, certainly deserves to be included in this category. An intricately plotted novel, Song of the Pearl has the added complexity of dealing with sophisticated matters of death and eschatology as well as drawing upon a variety of philosophies and theologies to create setting, characters, and themes. It is a complex and intellectually challenging novel that Nichols herself has said probably has as its audience adults or “precocious adolescents” (“Ruth Nichols: An Interview” 3). The main character of Song of the Pearl, Margaret Redmond, dies at the end of the first chapter after remembering her short life in nineteenth-century Toronto, a life affected by her debilitating asthma, her rape by her uncle, and her continuing sense that she has been somehow responsible for the unfortunate nature of her life. The remainder of the novel traces her experiences after her death as she undergoes a journey toward self-understanding and healing. Ultimately , Margaret realizes that the events of her most immediate past life are the result of actions she took in an incarnation thousands of years before as a young Sumerian prince, Tirigan. In succeeding lives, some of which she remembers during her journey, she has repeated those actions or been living out the effects of them. The journey depicted in Song of the Pearl is crucial for Margaret, a time when she must come to some understanding of herself if she is to grow beyond a sort of perpetual adolescence. I first read the novel as an adolescent, and, although it intrigued 233 me, I did not really understand it. It was not until I read interviews with Nichols, in which she discusses fantasy’s affiliations with Romanticism , and then read M. H. Abrams’s Natural Supernaturalism that the novel’s ideas began to make more sense. My understanding developed further after I became familiar with Jung’s writings about archetypes and the process of individuation. Finally, I became aware of shortcomings in the novel as I encountered feminist critiques of archetypal criticism. Achieving an understanding of the novel in the light of these theories worked in two ways: I understood the novel because of the theories I was learning, but I could understand the theories because I had a specific example to which to apply them. Thus, Song of the Pearl served to grow my mind larger by encouraging me to ask questions and by providing a frame in which to understand the answers. It has also served as a template upon which to understand the very process of interpretation. Interpretation of Song of the Pearl begins with acknowledging the effect of genre. The obvious archetypal elements in the novel are partially a result of Nichols’s choices of expression but also of the form of fantasy, which lends itself to such expression. Myth is the cornerstone of the genre and of Abrams’s and Jung’s theories: fantasy uses both content and structure of myth. Abrams traces the biblical myth and typology as revised by Romantics, and Jung draws many of his ideas and examples from myth. Archetypal interpretation, however, tends to downplay the significance of some of the more disturbing elements of Song of the Pearl, elements that have particularly strong sociological resonance, such as the responsibility of the victim for her victimization and the seeming acceptance of the role of women as submissive. Thus, although I find Abrams’s and Jung’s theories useful for understanding Song of the Pearl, I am also aware of some drawbacks to using such theory, drawbacks I will touch on as I examine Nichols’s use of reconstituted theology, the affinities of Margaret ’s journey to Abrams’s Romantic hero’s journey and to Jung’s process of individuation, particularly in the use of archetypal characters and of motifs from the occult, and finally, the weaknesses of the novel that correspond to feminist critiques of archetypal interpretation . Abrams’s theories of Romanticism provide a beginning point with which to explore both the complexities of Song of the Pearl and the strengths and...

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