The Psychological Stages of Feminine Development in La hija del aire: A Jungian Point of View

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STAGES OF FEMININE DEVELOPMENT IN LA HIJA DEL AIRE: A JUNGIAN POINT OF VIEW SUSAN L. FISCHER Bucknell University In the Primera parte of Calderón's La hija del aire, ' we witness the overall process of Semiramis' transformation from a woman-beast in a primitive state of existence to a beautiful and triumphant, manipulative and cunning, Assyrian Queen. In her own words, she becomes a «ser racional» (725b) possessed of free will, and her initial«pellejas de un lobo» are replaced by «pellejas cubiertas de oro» (739b) as the outward manifestation of her inner growth and change. In the Segunda parte, however, Semiramis is so utterly consumed by ambition and vengeance that she has her husband murdered and then kidnaps her son, dons his royal attire, and impersonates him on the throne. She herself alludes to her unnatural reversal of roles, to what appears to be a psychosexual transformation: del femenil adorno haciendo ultraje, me he ensayado en el traje varonil. . . (773b) ... yo, desmentido el sexo, gobernando. (774a) 137 138BCom, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Winter 1982) She is a form of Amazon woman, as Melveena McKendrick has pointed out,2 and a devouring mother-figure who never succeeds in reconciling and integrating opposing elements in her personality, thereby reaching the highest phase of feminine development. Instead, she dies a violent and horrible death, her pierced body plunging to the bottom of a precipice. However far Calderón may have been from the language of depth psychology, it is apparent that he understood with a remarkable fullness of vision the complex nature of the human personality, and his profound insights into the workings of the individual psyche are revealed in his plays. Our task of making those insights comprehensible may be the more readily accomplished if we are willing to juxtapose psychological theory and dramatic analysis in considering the figure of Semiramis. In particular, her intrapsychic processes can be shown to parallel to a greater or lesser degree the various stages of feminine development as explained and interpreted by Carl G. Jung's disciple, Erich Neumann, in several classic works ' and by Jungian analyst Ann Belford Ulanov in her book, The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian Theology. * It is hoped that by such a contextual illustration of certain of Jung's principles, we will enrich the perspectives on La hija del aire as a whole and especially on Semiramis as its central figure. Semiramis is found initially in a primitive stage of feminine development, one of psychic unity and wholeness, where there is no separation of inner and outer worlds, of subject and object. On an intrapsychic level, this means that the individual is contained in the allembracing , maternal, and protective power of the unconscious; personally this situation is expressed by the connection of the child with the mother, and more generally by confinement within the clan, the group, or the house. According to Neumann, it is experienced archetypically as the «Great Mother,» and characterized mythologically by the symbol of the maternal «uroborus, the serpent forming a closed circle, the tail swallower» («Psychological Stages,» p. 63). Neumann says elsewhere: Circle, sphere, and round are all aspects of the Selfcontained , which is without beginning and end;. . . it is prior to any process, eternal, for in its roundness, there is no before and no after, no time; and there is no above and no below, no space. AU this can only come with the coming of light, of consciousness, which is not yet present. (Origins and History, p. 8) Fischer139 The original psychic situation is represented as anything deep—abyss, ground, sea, underworld, cave, house—and Neumann goes on,«Anything big and embracing which contains, surrounds, enwraps, shelters, preserves, and nourishes anything small belongs to the primordial matriarchal realm» (p. 14). 5 The uroborus appears as the round container, that is, the maternal womb, but also as the union of masculine and feminine opposites, the World Parents joined together. In this primitive phase, then, the Mother is experienced as both masculine and feminine, for the individual is not yet capable of differentiating the sexes. Only later on, in a stage that corresponds chronologically to early childhood, does there...