Correspondence

I should like to thank Pia Skogemann for her detailed comments on my paper ‘In search of the heroine’, published in the July 1989 issue of this Journal. She has, however, missed the central point about my definition of the heroine. She writes that it is ‘the image of woman as helpless, pregnant, forsaken but ultimately triumphing through endless suffering’. While these are undoubtedly important components of the fairy tale (and perhaps the plight of many heroines), I have pointed out that what makes the heroine a heroine is her period in the forest. This is not simply a period of suffering or of endurance, but one of change and, most importantly, of change which is not brought about (as by the hero), but which happens. In this respect the ‘passivity’ of the heroine is related to Jung's idea of the transcendent function or to what Keats called ‘negative capability’.

I certainly agree that, as a role model for woman today, the Handless Maiden is a disturbing one. But I question whether the presentation of role models is really what fairy tales are about or have to offer us. The fact that the hero is portrayed as a man and the heroine as a woman does have certain implications, which I explore in my paper. I have chosen to look at these correspondences as reflecting internal psychic processes and not as a literal illustration of the role of either sex.

Finally, Pia Skogemann seems to fall into the same error in referring to the ‘female ego’. I find this a mystifying term as it seems to imply that there are two kinds of egos—male and female—that presumably belong to men and women respectively. If this is the case then it also seems to suggest that men and women have different psychic structures or psychologies. Such a view is in direct conflict with the meaning I wish to convey in my paper.