Mothers, Sleeping Beauty, and the Beast
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On the Female Heroic Archetype
Q&A from August 2018
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Q: What is the female equivalent of the hero archetype?
A: The figure of Mary is actually a heroic figure in and of itself.
... The thing about Mary is that she knew initially, when she agreed to give birth to the savior of mankind, that he would be broken. And that’s an archetypal story, because women know in their heart of hearts that their children are going to be broken and killed by the world. That’s the human condition. And of course, a woman who’s well developed loves her child more than herself, loves her child more than anyone else—which is something you can’t really understand till you’ve had a child—but is still willing to bring that child into the world, knowing full well what his or her fate will be. And so there’s real heroism in that.
And then there’s the standard heroism that a woman can undertake where she develops her masculine side, which is basically what happens for example in Sleeping Beauty. When Sleeping Beauty is awakened by the prince’s kiss, you can think of her being rescued by an actual man, but you can also think of that as the masculine part of her psyche waking up her unconscious femininity so the two of them can unite and rule the kingdom. It’s a perfectly reasonable interpretation of that story. And so that would be the development of the masculine side in a female—the side that’s stalwart and forthright and willing to go forth into the world and conquer uncertainty.
And then there’s the Beauty and the Beast archetype, which I think is in some sense the primary female sexual archetype. Beauty and the Beast is another kind of dragon-slaying story. It’s more like a “dragon-taming” story, I suppose, where the woman—the virginal woman who’s out for an adventure—finds a beastly male. And that’s the dangerous man that I was talking about earlier, the man who has the capacity, say, to kill; the capacity to harm; the capacity for violence at hand. Right? At hand. And [she] then proceeds to tame him, which is a real adventure...
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New Podcast Re-release: Cain and Abel: The Hostile Brothers (season 3, episode 5)
- We are re-releasing Dr. Peterson's biblical lectures, during a time when we believe it to be helpful.
- Listen to the current release: "I had a friend, at one point, who was a very bitter person. He had a bunch of problems. Some of them were self-inflicted, and some of them were fate, I suppose. He had become very, very destructive—murderously destructive. Genocidally destructive, I would say... He didn’t get educated, but he was a very, very smart person. He probably had an IQ of 135, or something like that. He was bitter, too, because he hadn’t educated himself to the level that his intellect would have demanded. He had to take jobs that were beneath him, intellectually. He had that real intellectual arrogance, and really smart people often come to believe that only smart matters. If they’re smart, and all that matters is smart, and then the world isn't sort of laying itself at their feet, then they’ve been terribly betrayed. Then they point to their intelligence, which is more like a talent or a gift. It’s like a false idol, which is exactly what it is, and a very dangerous one. They get cynical about the stupidity of the world and the fact that their talents weren’t properly recognized. That’s just not that helpful. Smart is a good thing, but, I’ll tell you, if you don’t use it properly, it will devour you, just like all arbitrarily assigned talent..." Listen now.
Twitter: The consequences of talking about Jordan Peterson, by a Times of Israel blogger
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East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
From the dust jacket:
"This sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel."
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"So, here’s to you, Mom."
Re-read Dr. Peterson's birthday tribute to Beverley Anne Peterson, in celebration of the qualities of a remarkable mother.
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