Eternal feminine

The eternal feminine is a psychological archetype or philosophical principle that idealizes an immutable concept of "woman". It is one component of gender essentialism, the belief that men and women have different core "essences" that cannot be altered by time or environment.[1] The conceptual ideal was particularly vivid in the 19th century, when women were often depicted as angelic, responsible for drawing men upward on a moral and spiritual path.[2] Among those virtues variously regarded as essentially feminine are "modesty, gracefulness, purity, delicacy, civility, compliancy, reticence, chastity, affability, [and] politeness".[3]

Goethe

The concept of the "eternal feminine" (German: das Ewig-Weibliche) was introduced by Goethe at the end of Faust, Part Two (1832):

Everything transient
Is but a symbol;
The insufficient
Here finds fulfilment;
The indescribable
Here becomes deed;
The eternal-feminine
Draws us on high.

Although Goethe does not introduce the eternal feminine until the last two lines of the play, he prepared for its appearance at the outset. "Equally pertinent in this regard," writes J. M. van der Laan, "are Gretchen and Helen, who alternate with each other from start to finish and ultimately combine with others to constitute the Eternal-Feminine"[4] At the beginning of Part I, Act IV, Faust glimpses in the passing clouds "a godlike female form" in which he discerns Juno, Leda, Aurora, Helen and Gretchen. This "lovely form" does not dissolve, but rises into the aether, drawing, Faust says, "the best of my soul forth with itself"—rather as the eternal feminine does in the last line of the play. Also embodiments of the eternal feminine are four other women who appear with the redeemed Gretchen at the end of Part II, Act V: Magna Peccatrix (the "great sinner" who anointed Jesus), Mulier Samaritana (the Samaritan woman at the well), Maria Aegytiaca (Mary of Egypt), and Mater Gloriosa (Mary, mother of Jesus). Then there are Galatea, who appears in Part II, Act II as a surrogate for Aphrodite; the Graces Aglaia (representing beauty), Hegemone (representing generosity), and Euphrosyne (representing joy), who feature briefly in Part II, Act I; and even the uncanny Mothers, whom Faust visits in Part II, Act I to conjure up Helen.[5] Sophia, the biblical personification of divine wisdom, does not appear per se in Faust, but she is subtly present in Helen, not to mention the other women; her attributes (Wisdom 7:23–26) recall those of the female figures manifested in the clouds; and she is alluded to in Goethe's repeated references to eternal light (cf. Wisdom 7:26).[6] Significantly, the women who contribute to the eternal feminine often appear in groups, and at times one of them calls up the image of another. In Helen there are hints of Gretchen (in the cloud scene) and Sophia; Galatea appears as an Aphrodite figure. The eternal feminine is a communal affair, a sisterhood.

However, not all the female figures who appear in the play contribute to the eternal feminine. As van der Laan notes, "Lieschen, who gossips about the misfortunes of Barbara, pregnant out of wedlock, does not possess the qualities later to be associated with the Eternal-Feminine. These qualities are also lacking in the witches of the Walpurgis Night. Only a select number of the play's many feminine figures contribute something of themselves to the construction of the ideality Goethe finally reveals at the end of the play.[7]

The subversive side of Goethe's eternal feminine is highlighted by Nietzsche scholar Carol Diethe, who observes that Goethe, like Nietzsche in a rather different way later, used the concept to challenge the "blinkered bourgeois morality" of nineteenth-century Germany: "In Goethe's case, that morality ought to have put the child murderess Gretchen beyond the pale: at the end of Faust I (1808), she is not just a fallen woman but a felon, which is precisely why Goethe places her in the redemptive role, forcing his wealthy Weimar theater audience to show tolerance, willy-nilly."[8]

A host of female figures—van der Laan mentions fifteen, not counting the Mothers—contribute something of themselves and their various symbolic possibilities to the eternal feminine.[7] The range of connotations is extraordinarily diverse. While the eternal feminine symbolizes such qualities as beauty, love, mercy, and grace, it "also personifies the transcendent realm of ultimate being, of divine wisdom and creative power which forever exceeds human reach, but at the same time ever draws us into itself."[9] Goethe's "Eternal Feminine," writes the Korean-American philosopher T. K. Seung, "is the supreme cosmic power for the governance of the world."[10] The "feminine principle", which "operates in every human heart", is "a cosmic principle."[11] Citing the opinion of Goethe scholar Hans Arens that "the Eternal-Feminine is not simply to be equated with love. Rather, it is the eternal or divine which reveals itself in the feminine," van der Laan concludes: "As the symbolic representation of divine wisdom and creative power, the Eternal-Feminine can never be grasped or possessed. Beyond all human reach and comprehension, the eternal and divine always draws Faust and humanity onward toward itself."[12]

It is to be noted that the Goethean concept of the eternal feminine is an ideal for both men and women, to the same degree, if not in the same way. This is shown in the use of common-gendered terms like "humanity" (as in the last quote above), "people"[12] or "us" to refer to those whom it draws onward or upward. In Goethe's own words, "The eternal-feminine draws us on high." As he realized, encompassing the range of human experience requires transcending the traditional stuff of patriarchy, as it tends to efface the feminine.[13] His introduction in Faust of the eternal feminine is an attempt to redress this imbalance and achieve a more comprehensive vision. In T. K. Seung's words, "the noble forms of the Eternal Feminine"—symbolized in the play by the "godlike female form" in the clouds in which Faust discerns Juno, Leda, Aurora, Helen and Gretchen—"are Goethe's transcendent forms, which stand above all positive norms and which enable us to transcend the narrow perspective of our individual self. This power of transcendence is provided by the Eternal Feminine."[14]

Transcendentalist feminism

The right to pursue self-culture (Bildung) regardless of sex, race, or social position was at the heart of the project of nineteenth-century New England Transcendentalism.[15] The idea of self-culture was closely associated with Goethe and other German authors. In her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), Transcendentalist feminist Margaret Fuller praised Goethe's portrayal of women in his writings: "He aims at a pure self-subsistence, and free development of any powers with which they may be gifted by nature as much for them as for men. They are units [individuals] addressed as souls. Accordingly, the meeting between man and woman, as represented by him, is equal and noble."[16]

For Fuller, "man and woman... are the two halves of one thought.... I believe that the development of the one cannot be effected without that of the other."[17] Furthermore, "male and female... are perpetually passing into one another.... There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman."[18] She expressed this idea in terms drawn from classical mythology: "Man partakes of the feminine in the Apollo, woman of the masculine in the Minerva."[19] One of the most warlike of the classical goddesses, Minerva embodied a fierce independence.[20] Fuller believed that women were fully capable of being sea-captains or military leaders,[21] and she had no doubt that there would one day be "a female Newton".[18]

Later developments

The feminine principle is further articulated by Nietzsche within a continuity of life and death, based in large part on his readings of ancient Greek literature, since in Greek culture both childbirth and the care of the dead were managed by women.[22] Domesticity and the power to redeem and serve as moral guardian were also components of the "eternal feminine".[23] The virtues of women were inherently private, while those of men were public.[24]

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar state that for Goethe, "woman" symbolized pure contemplation, in contrast to masculine action.[25] If by "woman" they mean "the eternal feminine" (they are not the same thing), their statement is incorrect. Contemplation is certainly one of the myriad qualities symbolized in the eternal feminine, but so is agency,[26] that is, the capacity to act. They also note a parallel to the eastern Daoist descriptions of Yin and Yang.[25] T. K. Seung observes that in Chinese philosophy "Yin is the feminine principle; Yang is the masculine principle.... But Yin is the mother of all things. The primacy of Yin over Yang is expressed by the phrase 'Yin and Yang.' The Chinese never say 'Yang and Yin.' The ancient Chinese belief [is] that Yin is stronger than Yang."[27]

In music

The concluding lines of Goethe's Faust on the "eternal feminine" were set to music by Robert Schumann in the last chorus of his Scenes from Goethe's Faust, by Franz Liszt at the end of the last movement of his Faust Symphony, and by Gustav Mahler in the last chorus of his Eighth Symphony.

In Wide is the Gate, the fourth novel of the "Lanny Budd" series by Upton Sinclair, Lanny says to Gertrud Schultz, "What Goethe calls das ewig weibliche is seldom out of my consciousness; I don’t think it is ever entirely out of any man’s consciousness."

See also

References
  1. Susan Abraham, "Justice as the Mark of Catholic Feminist Ecclesiology," in Frontiers in Catholic Feminist Theology: Shoulder to Shoulder (Fortress Press, 2009), p. 207.
  2. Frances Nesbitt Oppel, Nietzsche On Gender: Beyond Man And Woman, pp. 6–7, 16–17, 22 et passim.
  3. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (Yale University Press, 2nd ed. 2000, originally published 1979), p. 23.
  4. J. M. van der Laan, "The Enigmatic Eternal-Feminine", in Goethe's Faust and Cultural Memory: Comparatist Interfaces, edited by Lorna Fitzsimmons (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Lehigh University Press, 2012), p. 37.
  5. van der Laan, "The Enigmatic Eternal-Feminine", pp. 37–40.
  6. van der Laan, "The Enigmatic Eternal-Feminine", pp. 40–43.
  7. van der Laan, "The Enigmatic Eternal-Feminine", p. 39.
  8. Carol Diethe, "Eternal Feminine/Womanly", Historical Dictionary of Nietzscheanism, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2007), p. 80.
  9. van der Laan, "The Enigmatic Eternal-Feminine", p. 43.
  10. T. K. Seung, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner: Their Spinozan Epics of Love and Power (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2006), p. 124.
  11. Seung, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner, p. 146.
  12. van der Laan, "The Enigmatic Eternal-Feminine", p. 44.
  13. Adrian Del Caro, "Margarete-Ariadne: Faust's Labyrinth", in Goethe Yearbook, Vol. XVIII, ed. Daniel Purdy (Rochester, NY: Camden Press, 2011), p. 236.
  14. Seung, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner, pp. 158–159.
  15. Tiffany K. Wayne, Woman Thinking: Feminism and Transcendentalism in Nineteenth-Century America (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2005), pp. 3, 46.
  16. Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845), p. 115.
  17. Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, p. vi.
  18. Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, p. 103.
  19. Fuller. Woman in the Nineteenth Century, p. 104.
  20. Jeffrey Steele, ed., "Introduction" to The Essential Margaret Fuller (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), p. xxxv.
  21. Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, p. 159.
  22. Oppel, Nietzsche On Gender, p. 4.
  23. Oppel, Nietzsche On Gender, p. 4.
  24. Oppel, Nietzsche On Gender, p. 7.
  25. Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, p. 21.
  26. Ellis Dye, "Figurations of the Feminine in Goethe's Faust", in A Companion to Goethe's Faust Parts I and II, ed. Paul Bishop (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2001), p. 107.
  27. Seung, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner, p. 129.


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