While I was doing the initial analysis for what turned into my most recent book on the relationship between Nietzsche and Wagner, I had something of an epiphany about what might seem to be a completely unrelated subject. I realised that the New Testament is what I call an Orphan Story. Long-term readers might remember a series I did on the Orphan archetype a few years ago. At that time, I was concerned only with the fictional version of the story, but I’ve since come to realise that the Orphan Story, and stories more generally, are very much real.

Ironically, this was the understanding of most people for most of history. People took for granted that stories conveyed the truth about reality. It’s only in the last few hundred years that Western culture has decided that there is a sharp distinction between fact and fiction. As it happens, this distinction is intricately tied up with the study of the New Testament because the rise of modern historical scholarship, including advances in related fields such as archaeology, linguistics, and anthropology, allowed scholars to categorise the Bible into the parts which had factual corroborating evidence and those which did not. The latter category was seen as either fiction or theology, while the former was history. This demythologising process began with the Enlightenment and really kicked into gear in the 19th century.

We are this implicit divide between fact and fiction so much for granted that it’s hard for us to entertain the idea that there are sound philosophical reasons it is, at best, highly problematic. One of the ways to address the issue is to learn to see beyond simple cause-and-effect relationships and entertain the idea that the real world is just as much structured by larger patterns. This is exactly what the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell did in relation to stories in the 20th century since he discovered the pattern which lay beneath them, what he called the hero’s journey. It turns out that the hero’s journey is just as relevant to our understanding of history, and the New Testament provides a uniquely fitting object of study to prove that because we have a relatively detailed knowledge of the historical facts that surround the story.

What we’ll be doing in this series of posts is taking Campbell’s hero’s journey template and applying it to the New Testament. But we’ll be using a specific version which I stumbled upon when I started to see that the hero’s journey implies an archetypal hero and that we can investigate stories from this archetypal point of view. The specific archetype that is relevant in this case is the Orphan. We’ll call stories that feature Orphan heroes Orphan Stories. In this post, we’ll outline the structure and elements of the Orphan Story, and then we’ll see what it has to tell us about the New Testament next week.

Every story that follows the hero’s journey structure can be broken down into three sections: departure, initiation, and return. The departure phase includes the Call to Adventure whereby the hero is invited to leave behind their current life and take a journey into the unknown. The initiation phase is where the hero comes to grips with the new world that they have entered.

The return phase is the incorporation of the lessons learned during initiation and the subsequent transcendence of the hero to a new life that is qualitatively different to the one that they started from.

When the hero of the story is an archetypal Orphan, the qualitative difference that comes at the end of the story is that the hero has become an adult. Thus, the primary elements of the Orphan Story relate to the process by which each of us leaves behind childhood and makes the difficult journey towards maturity. That is why the separation from the parents is a key feature of the Orphan Story. Similarly, becoming an adult implies taking up a role in the institutions of society, and this involves having mentors who can guide us. That is why the Elder archetype forms a core part of the story. In short, the Orphan Story is not merely a figment of imagination. Its primary elements are very much based in reality.

The character of the Elder in the Orphan Story is problematic for us in the West precisely because this role has all but disappeared from modern culture, even though it regularly shows up in the stories and films. The Elder is supposed to take over from the parents and guide the Orphan’s path towards adulthood. Modern terms such as ‘teacher’ or ‘mentor’ work tolerably well to capture the meaning of this role. However, the relationship between Orphan and Elder, in its most profound manifestation, goes beyond mere practicality and amounts to the transmission of the core metaphysical beliefs of a society.

Furthermore, the Elder is not just giving personalised instruction to the Orphan, but inducting them into an institution of society of which the Elder is the recognised leader. Once again, our modern bias leads us to believe that “institutions” must be formal organisations and that the relationship between Orphan and Elder is strictly regulated. In fact, the most intense forms of initiation do not, and probably can not, take place in an environment of excessive governance and rule following. Any true initiation can only take place outside of the rules of society because it is always a confrontation with the unknown. A story that doesn’t involve the hero breaking the bounds of the known world is guaranteed to be a very dull tale. That’s true of fiction. It’s also true of our own lives.

With these considerations in mind, let’s now list the basic elements of the Orphan Story in the order in which they normally appear, and then we’ll use the template to analyse some famous examples:-

1.     The hero is separated from his parents (becoming an archetypal Orphan)
2.     The hero hears news of the Elder or the institution to which the Elder is associated
3.     The hero meets the Elder, who offers them initiation
4.     Initiation commences, including induction into the institution led by the Elder
5.     A Shadow Elder tries to subvert the initiation
6.     There is a struggle between the hero, the Elder and the Shadow Elder
7.     The Elder dies or goes missing (usually sacrificing themselves for the hero)
8.     The hero faces the Shadow Elder alone

The most famous example of the Orphan Story template in modern times is certainly the Star Wars trilogy. What is particularly interesting about that is that the first movie in the series is an Orphan Story in itself, and then George Lucas turned it into the original trilogy, which also has the structure of an Orphan Story. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just use the first movie and show how it fits the template.

• Step 1 – The hero is separated from his parents: We can see that this is fulfilled right at the beginning of the movie because we meet Luke Skywalker, who is living on the planet Tatooine with his aunt and uncle, not with his parents, who are dead. It’s a very common theme in Orphan Stories for the hero to be a literal orphan.
• Step 2 – The hero hears news of the Elder: Luke’s uncle buys two droids, and Luke is given the job of cleaning them up instead of going off to have fun with his friends. That’s when he discovers the message from Princess Leia and realises that it’s intended for Obi-Wan.
• Step 3 – The hero meets the Elder, who offers initiation: Luke finds Obi-Wan and shows him the message. The offer of initiation here comes in a roundabout fashion because when Luke and Obi-Wan return to the farm, they find Luke’s aunt and uncle have been killed by stormtroopers. In terms of the hero’s journey template, this is the consummation of the departure phase of the story. Luke’s old life has been quite literally destroyed. Obi-Wan has brecome the Elder who will guide him towards his new life.
• Step 4 – Initiation commences: Luke will now been inducted into two new institutions of society. Firstly, he is on a pathway to become a Jedi Knight, and we see Obi-Wan give him his first lessons in how to use a lightsaber. Secondly, he has now joined the rebel cause in the fight against the empire. That also involves him making new friends in Hans Solo and Chewbacca.
• Step 5 – A Shadow Elder tries to subvert the initiation: Star Wars gives us one of the all-time great Shadow Elder characters in the person of Darth Vader. Since Vader is on the side of the empire, he is already an adversary to the rebels. But Vader is also an ex-Jedi who has gone bad. Therefore, he represents a dual Shadow Elder to both of Luke’s new identities as rebel fighter and Jedi Knight
• Step 6 – There is a struggle between the hero, the Elder and the Shadow Elder: Vader captures the Millennium Falcon and brings it aboard the Death Star. Luke and the others avoid detection and set about trying to save the princess.
• Step 7 – The Elder dies or goes missing (usually sacrificing themselves for the hero): Obi-Wan sacrifices himself fighting Vader, which allows the others to escape.
• Step 8 – The hero faces the Shadow Elder alone: the final showdown between Luke and Vader sees the Death Star destroyed.

Although Star Wars is nominally a science fiction story, it has direct parallels with what was, at the time, the most popular Orphan Story genre, namely, medieval knight tales. The quest to save a princess is at the heart of many of those stories, although the hero usually marries her at the end. It’s noteworthy that George Lucas flirted with the idea of having a romance between Luke and Leia before changing his mind and turning them into brother and sister. Thus, Luke is left without a bride at the end of the initial trilogy, making him more of a Warrior-Monk archetype.

In the medieval knight version of the Orphan Story, the Shadow Elder role takes the form of an evil wizard or a dragon. Darth Vader could be seen to fulfil both of these archetypes. His Jedi powers make him a wizard, but he is also in charge of the advanced technology of the Death Star. Meanwhile, his membership of a seemingly all-powerful force that brings tyranny and death has much in common with the medieval dragon. Thus, the character of Luke Skywalker corresponds to medieval knights such as Lancelot, Lohengrin, Parsifal, and St George.

We could run through numerous other examples of Orphan Stories which fit the template we have outlined, but this would take us too far off course. The interested reader is invited to apply the template to the following examples to prove that they are also Orphan Stories: Avatar, The Matrix, Harry Potter, Dune, A Wizard of Earthsea, Cinderella, Snow White, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet (sort of), Much Ado About Nothing (sort of).

There’s an entire book to be written exploring the symbolism of the Orphan Story (one day, I might write that book), but there are two primary meanings to point out for our purposes. Firstly, one of the things that the Orphan Story represents is the passing of the generations and, in particular, the way in which the older generation integrates the younger. The Orphan must be initiated into a culture. The completion of that initiation is when the individual is ready to take on adult responsibilities in the realms of the family, economy, politics, military, and religion. In the modern West, we have managed to make initiation about as boring as possible through the mass education system. Therefore, our initiation doesn’t feel like a hero’s journey. Nevertheless, our intuitive understanding of stories like Star Wars proves that we still grasp at some level what true initiation looks like.

In the characters of the Elder and the Shadow Elder, the Orphan Story shows us both the successful and unsuccessful ways for the older generation to induct the younger. In this respect, it is no coincidence that the Elder sacrifices themselves for the hero. The Elder steps aside and allows the Orphan to take their place. That is what must happen if the rising generation is to be incorporated into the culture. They must be given a real position of responsibility. The death of the Elder is symbolic of them allowing the Orphan to take that position.

But what happens when the older generation refuses to step aside and allow the younger one to take its rightful place? That is what the Shadow Elder represents. The Shadow Elder does not offer the Orphan a proper initiation that ends with full membership of the culture with the attendant responsibility that comes with that. What they demand instead is obedience and subordination.

Because the dominance demanded by the Shadow Elder mimics that of a parent towards a child, it is very common to represent the Shadow Elder as a tyrannical father or devouring mother figure. George Lucas hit the nail on the head by later turning Darth Vader into Luke’s father. Another classic example of this trope is the old Greek myth of the titan, Cronus, who is told by a prophecy that his son will overthrow him and decides to eat him instead.

The devouring mother archetype fulfils the same function and is often represented by a wicked stepmother who is common in fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White. Shakespeare’s Hamlet provides a similar theme, where Claudius usurps the throne by killing Hamlet’s father and marrying his mother, thereby preventing the prince from taking his rightful place as king. In all these cases, we have a Shadow Elder attempting to prevent the younger generation from taking power and thereby destroying the inter-generational transmission of the culture.

In this way, the Orphan Story is not just about the personal journey of the hero to adulthood but also has an intricate social and political dimension too. The difficulties explored by such stories and myths are very real. One of the eternal predicaments of human society is how to pass the baton to the next generation. The tyrannical Shadow Elder is one representation of how things can go wrong with that process, but history shows us other possibilities. For example, the supposedly wise and benevolent Marcus Aurelius organised for his psychopath son Commodus to take the purple. If ever there was a case for not allowing this particular representative of the coming generation to ascend to power, this was it. Yet, Aurelius went ahead with a move so bad that it brought to an end the golden age of the Roman imperium.

The relationship between the Elder and the Orphan in the Orphan Story shows us the positive transmission of a culture from one generation to the next. The wise Elder educates the Orphan and then steps aside when the time is right to allow the hero to take the reins. The Shadow Elder does not want to educate the Orphan because he knows that this will make the hero a challenge to his authority. This is not only a political problem; it stifles the entire culture by preventing the fresh perspective of the rising generation from reinvigorating the old forms. That is why the Shadow Elder must be defeated. Siegfried and St George must slay the dragon. Hamlet must kill Claudius. Luke Skywalker must defeat Vader. Neo must destroy Agent Smith. Harry Potter must overcome Voldemort.

It is this socio-political background to the Orphan Story that will be crucial to our understanding of the New Testament because history shows us that societies wax and wane in their ability to integrate the next generation into the culture. When that process begins to break down, we find that the Shadow Elder comes to dominate, and society moves away from the peaceful and fruitful transmission of the culture to the next generation and into a tyrannical phase where elites no longer rule by consent but by force. When that happens, the older generation becomes like Cronus, metaphorically eating its young. Once those conditions are established, the time is ripe for the Orphan hero to arrive on the scene and slay the dragon. As Jesus puts it:

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” Matthew 10:34

When historians analyse major historical developments, they have tended to do so through the lens of political power, which makes sense purely from a narrative point of view since political stories usually involve great personalities and dramatic events which seem to turn the entire tide of history in one fell swoop. On closer inspection, however, we find that these great events of history have their own history. When we examine that, it starts to look as though the most momentous occasions are the final stages of longer processes, often the official culmination of tensions and forces that have been building for a very long time.

It was in the 19th century that this view of history as a series of longer arcs began to emerge. That entailed a reduction in emphasis on the great events and personalities and more focus on the forces that seemed to unite them. The historical materialism of Marx is a prime example of this, as were the thinkers who took a more esoteric approach, such as Vico, Herder, Humboldt, Nietzsche, Toynbee, Spengler, Freud and Jung.

The assumption of many materialists in the 19th century was that their viewpoint somehow extinguished the esoteric perspectives, as if only one or the other could be true at the same time. There’s no reason at all why that should be the case. In fact, we can easily incorporate the materialist perspective alongside the esoteric one and arrive at an integral or holistic point of view. A word which encapsulates this integral perspective is identity, which we can then divide into exoteric and esoteric aspects and which applies to both individuals and collectives. The exoteric aspects are the formal, outward-facing parts of identity, and the esoteric are inward-facing.

As individuals, our identity evolves as a constant back and forth between the exoteric and esoteric poles. A crisis of identity can seem to come from either. For example, being made redundant from your job is an exoteric problem. Becoming so disillusioned with your job that you quit is an esoteric one. But, as with important historical events, these individual crises have their own history that also vacillates between the exoteric and the esoteric. Maybe you (esoterically) saw the writing on the wall about your job, and the official (exoteric) redundancy did not come as a surprise. Maybe the disillusionment that led you to quit your job was preceded by numerous exoteric attempts to solve the various problems that were sucking away your motivation. Dramatic upheavals rarely come out of nowhere. The warning signs are there for those who know how to look.

In last week’s post, we sketched out some of the background context required to understand the “warning signs” that emerged in the 19th century and that eventually gave rise to feminism. We examined four different identities that had existed in Western culture since the medieval period. These were working-class men and women and their aristocratic counterparts. One major group we left out was the feudal peasantry. The reason we haven’t needed to focus on this group was because it was fairly easily transitioned into the working class as industrial capitalism took over in the 19th century. There were major problems associated with this, such as the appalling poverty and pollution in the industrial cities, but it didn’t cause an identity crisis because the established capitalist paradigm could initiate new members easily. In much the same way, aristocratic men gradually transitioned into the elite roles of the new paradigm, such as businessman, banker, parliamentarian, and technocrat, and that’s why there was no identity crisis among that demographic either.

The one demographic which was unable to transition easily into the new capitalist-democratic system was aristocratic women. To understand why, let’s describe the nature of the identity that such women had enjoyed in the centuries leading up to the 19th. If we recall our three primary categories, the biological-familial, socio-cultural, and higher esoteric, it’s easy to see that the role of aristocratic women was almost entirely limited to the biological-familial domain. The first and foremost task of such women was to propagate the family line, and there are countless dramatic stories which revolve around what happened when this went wrong (cough, cough, Henry VIII, cough, cough).

However, the role of an aristocratic woman was not limited to being a brood mare for her husband. There were a number of important ceremonial and cultural responsibilities to fulfil. There was also an economic function that, perhaps ironically, modern feminism has helped to erase. To understand this, we need to appreciate that, for most of history, the household has been a major source of production. The word “economy” comes from the Greek “oikonomia”, which meant “household management”. In ancient times, the households were where food, clothing, and many of the other necessities of life were produced, most of which was done by slaves. In addition, the household was managed by the women, as opposed to the public sphere, which was the province of men.

Almost the same paradigm was copied across into medieval Europe, where aristocratic estates were large-scale enterprises employing a small army of servants who grew and cooked the food, maintained the house and garden, and carried out whatever other productive activities were required. With the man of the house often away for various reasons, it fell to his wife to manage the affairs. Thus, in both ancient and medieval times, it was women who were in charge of household economic production, and this was an important part of their identity and also an important contribution to their families. Of course, the lady of the house would not have been expected to manage the servants directly but would have been a decision-maker and overseer. 

If we were to summarise the life of a young aristocratic woman from the medieval period onwards, we would say that she would be married off shortly after puberty to a husband chosen by her parents for the purposes of strengthening the family line. She would take up residence in the estate of her husband with the intention of bearing him children and then taking over the management of the estate. 20th-century feminists were correct in pointing out that this paradigm allowed women no pathways into the political and military institutions of society or the higher esoteric via formal education. That may be true. But it is clear that aristocratic women had a well-defined identity and one that was, all things considered, not exactly a terrible life when set against the conditions of broader society. Furthermore, especially in Renaissance Italy and 18th-century France, aristocratic women played important roles as patrons of the arts.

We may argue that women didn’t have a lot of freedom during this time, but nobody had much freedom. Your life path was pretty much defined at birth. People in those days had ninety-nine problems, but an identity crisis was not one. What brought on the identity crisis for the aristocracy was the arrival of industrial capitalism and democracy, which went hand-in-hand with the new Weltanschauung known as the Enlightenment. The upshot of all of this was to undermine both the economic and moral basis of the aristocracy, whose social position had always been tied to the ownership of land and the agricultural production that came with it. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the declining economic position of the aristocracy translated into reduced political influence as parliamentary democracy became increasingly controlled by the rising bourgeoisie, who passed a number of laws in their own interests and against the interests of the landed gentry. Perhaps the final nail in the coffin was the democratisation and professionalisation of military service, a process that was complete by the end of WW2. In fact, in most respects, WW2 signalled the official end of the old aristocracy.

We might take a Marxist approach to all this and claim that economic factors were solely to blame for the declining fortunes of the upper classes, but that would ignore the major changes that were also occurring in the Weltanschauung of the era. One of those might seem, at first sight, to be unrelated or trivial, and yet it had major implications for the life path of aristocratic women in particular. We alluded in last week’s post to the fact that Shakespeare enjoyed a major surge in popularity beginning early in the 19th century. This was part of the larger development known as Romanticism. One of the doctrines of the Romantic movement was a focus on passion as a guiding principle of life, in opposition both to the over-intellectualised Enlightenment movement and to the stuffy old notions of duty which had guided the aristocracy for centuries. It was now believed that young people should be allowed the freedom to develop according to their own inner nature rather than be made to conform to the requirements of society.

As a result of this, the arranged marriages of the aristocracy became an anachronism, both because they prioritised duty over passion and because they failed to allow young women the opportunity to develop themselves. Of course, it was also true that the economic and political basis of arranged marriage was fast becoming obsolete. In any case, the result was that aristocratic women no longer married shortly after puberty as they had been doing for centuries. Therein lay the crux of the identity crisis because, without marriage and the associated responsibilities of child-rearing and household management that came with it, young aristocratic women were left with no role to step into during adolescence.

As industrial capitalism and democracy became the dominant paradigm over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the working classes kept doing what they had been doing for centuries, which was taking a job to save money before getting married. Aristocratic men continued to follow the old pattern of receiving a long period of education, including military training, and then establishing themselves before marriage. The remnants of the old feudal peasantry had lost their identity, but they were easily absorbed into the growing working class and therefore had a well-established identity to transition into. That was precisely what aristocratic women lacked. Their old paradigm was also disappearing, but they had no new paradigm to move into. The socio-cultural institutions of society, such as politics, law, and the military, were closed to women, as they always had been. Formal education, including university study, was off limits, and no respectable woman would have considered getting involved in the grubby affairs of capitalist enterprise or finance. The Orphan phase of life had been lengthened for such women, but had been filled with nothing.

Let’s remember that the whole point of the Orphan phase is that we must separate from our parents and begin to forge our own identity. Viewed this way, the Orphan transition for aristocratic women had traditionally been far more abrupt and comprehensive than for their male counterparts since they had to leave their home, take the surname of their husband, and give birth to children shortly thereafter. That same pattern was prevalent in the early 19th century, but what the changes in attitude did was to push back the time of marriage so that aristocratic women were now marrying in their late teens and early twenties just like their working-class counterparts. Unlike the working class, however, it was considered inappropriate for aristocratic women to work. Meanwhile, educational opportunities were almost non-existent. Put simply, upper-class women had nothing to do except wait around in the house of their parents until they were old enough to get married.

It is no coincidence, then, that the literature of the 19th century began to be filled with stories involving young ladies vacillating between the tedium of domestic life and the thrill of romance which came with the new freedom of choice around a marriage partner. The novels of Jane Austen represent the most perfect expression of this dynamic, and it is no coincidence that they often hinge on a choice between love and money. In earlier times, the parents would always have chosen on financial grounds, but the young ladies of the 19th century found themselves with some power to make their own decisions, the same decision that Juliet makes in Shakespeare’s great play.

In fact, Jane Austen’s life was itself an exemplar of this new dynamic since she was born into an old-money family that had fallen on hard times with the changing economic conditions. Her choice was to marry as a way to escape the threat of poverty. Meanwhile, her “education” came from filling the hours that would otherwise have constituted dreadful domestic boredom with various artistic pursuits, including and especially writing. Austen was extremely fortunate to have a supportive and educated family that she used as her proto-audience to bootstrap herself to fame (although never fortune).

If Austen represents the positive side of the new domestic and romantic arrangements, Emily Brontë surely represents the darker side, and, again, it is no coincidence that the themes of her work reflect the much more problematic upbringing that she had with a mother who died when she was young and a father who was, although supportive of his daughter’s education, not the most affectionate and loving of parents. In any case, what we find in both writers, and others of the same era, are domestic situations revolving around young women who have nothing else to do but wait around for a marriage partner to arrive on the scene. That is what the new arrangements had brought into place and it was the new reality that young aristocratic women needed to deal with. The popularity of Austen and Brontë is testament to the fact that there were many other young women in that era who were facing the same situation.

Against this backdrop, the arrival during the Victorian era of extremely prudish attitudes towards sex among the aristocracy makes a great deal of sense. The new arrangements meant that young women would be sexually mature and single for a number of years before getting married. Since out-of-wedlock dalliances were out of the question, the honour of young ladies needed to be preserved, and one of the ways to do that was via the incredibly repressive morality around any form of sexual expression.

Of course, this was just one more restriction placed on young women who already had no meaningful way to express themselves or to formulate an identity of their own. In terms of the exoteric-esoteric distinction we have been using, aristocratic women had lost the old exoteric identity that was available to them as a wife and lady of the house. Whatever we think of that lifestyle, it was a proper identity and one that was recognised by society. By the 19th century, the same women had been almost entirely confined to the homes of their parents. They were denied an independent exoteric identity. As a result, they reverted back to the esoteric. Jane Austen and Emily Brontë were able to turn their introversion into great works of literature, but many other women were not so fortunate.

This leads us into another way in which the identity crisis expressed itself in esoteric form: the arrival of psychoanalysis. It is no coincidence that Freud and Jung’s patients were almost entirely drawn from one demographic of society: aristocratic women. Consider one of Freud’s most famous cases, called the Dora Case. Dora’s real name was Ida Bauer, and she was exactly the kind of young woman we have been talking about. She was born into an aristocratic family but had no real prospects for individual advancement during her teenage years. In fact, Ida was even more housebound than her peers since she needed to stay home for long hours to care for her sick father.

When Ida was eighteen, her father began to have an affair with a female friend of the family. That was bad enough, but then the husband of the woman her father was diddling made an advance at Ida herself. Ida slapped him for his trouble, whereupon her father decided that she needed to be sent to Freud for treatment. Nowadays, we would applaud Ida for standing up for herself, but in the Victorian era, it was simply not done to make a scene about such matters. Once again, the repressive morality of the era was largely at their expense. A big part of Freud’s appeal was simply that he listened to his young female patients without judgement, something that their families or broader society never did.

Just as Marx had reduced everything to materialism, Freud was interested only in psychological explanations. Our integral and holistic approach does not need to choose between these models because it makes clear that there is a feedback loop at play and that esoteric expressions of an identity crisis cannot be separated from the exoteric problems that are involved. At the time of life when the young women of the 19th century should have been extroverting themselves into an exoteric identity, they had been forced back into introversion. Combined with the stifling morality that aimed to govern their behaviour, it’s no wonder that a general helplessness fell on such women, which manifested primarily in psychological symptoms.

Of course, while these esoteric developments were taking place in the literary and psychological spheres, there also arose the political movement that came to be called feminism. It was feminism which dealt with the exoteric side of the equation by opening up new pathways of identity. Thus, there was political access in the form of suffrage, legal equality, avenues to formal education, and even, in our times, the ability to take up military service. All of these occurred synchronously with the broader arc of change that swept away the old aristocracy and replaced it with the democratic, capitalist technocracy that is still the dominant paradigm in our times. Whatever else can be said about that, it solved the identity crisis for aristocratic women.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve stumbled across several unrelated posts online claiming to explain the reasons behind the rise of feminism, including one amusing conspiracy theory whereby the minds of women have been explicitly targeted to bring about the downfall of western civilisation. Since this is a subject I ended up dealing with as part of my recent book on Archetypology, I thought I would take the opportunity to provide my account for the emergence of feminism, which, like most aspects of modern society, began with the broader identity crisis that took place in the 19th century.

Archetypology is able to identify that identity crisis with precision because it is a model of identity formation. The framework relies on an expanded version of the archetype concept first introduced into modern thinking by the great Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. The reason why I prefer to use archetypes is because they are natural symbols, and the advantage of a symbol is that it can point to multiple related meanings. For example, the archetype of a dove can denote the bird itself. But it also famously denotes peace, a meaning derived from the Old Testament story of Noah. From Greek mythology, we get the association of doves with love, and, like other birds, doves also have a symbolic meaning as messengers.

For those of us educated according to the strict scientific materialism of the post-war West, we are taught not to take this kind of symbolism seriously since it’s all too airy-fairy and vague and therefore not amenable to analysis and verification according to cause and effect. This attitude is a recent one and is at odds with the way our forebears treated symbolism, which was taken very seriously as a source of truth. It was Jung’s work which did the most to revitalise and validate symbolic thinking in modern times, although, of course, he has also fallen out of favour in the post-war years as scientific materialism has become the philosophical hegemon of our time. The point to be made is simply that symbolic thinking can be every bit as rigorous as “science”, and once upon a time people took it very seriously as a source of truth.

In Archetypology, we use the archetypes as complex symbols that point to truths about human nature and its development. We posit four archetypes that account for life’s journey: the Child, the Orphan, the Adult, and the Elder. Each of these can then be said to resonate across three primary fields of identity, which we call the biological-familial, the socio-cultural, and the higher esoteric. The provisional meaning of the first two should be fairly self-evident, while the category of “higher esoteric” mostly refers to what Kant and the subsequent German tradition called a Weltanschauung, or worldview, which includes the primary beliefs of an individual and culture, including moral, religious, mythological, philosophical, and intellectual presuppositions about the world. Our Weltanschauung operates mostly subconsciously, and it is only if we actively engage in philosophical, theological, or aesthetic reflection that we can bring it to consciousness.

When we combine the three “levels of being” with the four archetypes, we get a simple but powerful matrix for tracking human development over the course of life. In table form, it looks like this:-

This simple way of framing development nevertheless hides a great deal of complexity. The advantage of Archetypology is that it provides a map that allows us to “drill down” into lower levels of complexity without losing sight of where we are in the broader picture. One of the complexities that is hidden in the above table is the distinction between men and women. Another is class distinctions in civilisation. We need to flesh out both of these in more detail because modern feminism arose out of a crisis of identity that occurred in the 19th century among a quite specific demographic in Western society: aristocratic women.

But we can be even more specific than that because the problems facing aristocratic women in the 19th century were contained to the Orphan phase of life. As the name suggests, the Orphan archetype is about separating from our parents and family and beginning to forge our identity in the broader culture. In almost every society, there is a marked difference between the male and female initiation that occurs during the Orphan phase of life. We’ll turn to those in a minute. But, first, let’s distinguish the Orphan from the Child.

The identity of the Child is almost entirely subsumed within the family. It is a seeming universal of human culture that children are left to the care of their parents for at least the first five or six years of life. But even in the period after this, the Child is not seen to have a real independent identity and is given none of the political, economic, or religious rights that are granted later. For all intents and purposes, the Child has no socio-cultural identity except as a member of its family. Similarly, the Child has a limited understanding of the Weltanschauung of the culture into which it is born, since what is learned during this time is done through instinct, imitation and mimicry rather than conscious reflection.

The transition to the Orphan phase of life is ushered in by the arrival of puberty which coincides with what the psychoanalysts call the birth of the ego. This gives us both a major biological and psychological upheaval which, in almost every culture, is the signal for the first proper initiation into the socio-cultural realm. The individual’s family identity is deprecated in favour of a new set of identities granted by the wider society. Hunter gatherer tribes, in particular, seem to have marked this change very strongly with initiation rituals for both men and women accompanied by subsequent taboos and restrictions around interaction with the parents.

The major change in identity that occurs with the onset of the Orphan archetype resonates very differently for men and women. That is obviously true at the biological level, but it’s equally true in the socio-cultural. Anthropology tells us that the most common cultural paradigm for women is to marry shortly after puberty and leave the home they grew up in to move into that of their husband. Especially in pre-modern societies, this involved an almost complete severance with the family of birth due to the difficulty of travel and lack of communication technology. But, in many cultures, even when contact can be continued between the women and her family, it is considered inappropriate and only ever done through the auspices of the husband’s family.

If we remember that the Orphan archetype is all about severing or reducing dependence on the parents, then we can see that such practices fulfil the Orphan’s mission to a tee. In fact, we can argue that women have traditionally had a far more pronounced break with their family. By contrast, in patriarchal societies, men are expected to continue their family line rather than break with it. Having said that, the man’s “leadership” of the family is mostly a legal or religious matter rather than a practical one. The household itself has traditionally been the domain of women, and when a young woman is married, she has the task of being initiated into her husband’s family, a job which is normally done by the matriarchs of the household: primarily, the mother and grandmother.

The Orphan phase of life for young men has typically involved initiation into the socio-cultural institutions of society, of which the economic, political, and military are the most important. Because these require a longer period of education and training, the Orphan period for men has usually quite a bit longer than it is for women. In addition, men have been expected to establish themselves in society before getting married. This means that grooms have traditionally been older than brides in most cultures.

Although these general properties hold across many cultures throughout history, there are, of course, innumerable variations, and the one we are concerned with here is that which gave rise to modern feminism. It’s called the Western European Marriage Pattern (WEMP), and it emerged in the Middle Ages in northern and western Europe, predominantly in the towns and cities.

As far as young male Orphans go, the WEMP was not that unusual. Both working-class and aristocratic males were expected to establish themselves in society before getting married. This normally involved an apprenticeship/education period of a number of years. However, because Western Europe at the time was relatively poor, it took young men longer to establish themselves. The result was that the average age of marriage occurred very late. It was not uncommon for aristocratic men to marry in their early 30s or even later. Meanwhile, their working class counterparts had an average age of marriage in the early 20s.

By far the most unusual part of the WEMP was the way it played out for young women, but here we see a crucial demographic difference that was already present in the Middle Ages. As we have already noted, the common paradigm across cultures is for women to marry shortly after puberty, move in to the household of their husband’s family, and have children shortly thereafter. That was true of one demographic of women in the West: the aristocracy. Young aristocratic women married young and took up residence with their husband’s family with the express intent of continuing the family line.

We see a classic example of this dynamic in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Juliet is only thirteen years old when Paris comes courting. She doesn’t want to get married, but her mother tries to encourage her by pointing out that several of her friends had already tied the knot and had even had children. Thus, as late as 1600, when Shakespeare wrote the play, it was normal for a woman of Juliet’s pedigree to marry at 13. That would be the case all the way into the 19th century, and it was only in the middle of that century that the legal age of marriage for women was raised from 12 in most Western nations.

All of this was quite normal when compared against other cultures. Where the WEMP really differed was among young working-class women, the demographic majority of society. Because of the relative poverty of Europe at that time, most families could afford little to no dowry, and therefore the only way that a working-class couple could set themselves up for marriage was to work and save money. That is exactly what young women did, and the classic medieval archetype of the pretty young housemaid comes out of this dynamic since it was mostly in the households of the wealthy that young women could hope to earn a living. Because the wages were very low, it took a number of years to build up any kind of savings, and this meant that the average age of marriage for young women was far older than in almost all other cultures at the time. In fact, working-class women were almost as old as their male counterparts in getting married in their late teens and early 20s on average.

One of the results of all this was the relative independence that the young working class had from their families, which allowed them a much greater choice of marriage partner. Since the parents were not paying a dowry, their ability to influence the choice of a husband or wife was limited. Furthermore, although multi-generational families were common, they were not as dominant as in other societies meaning that many young couples expected to move into their own home rather than live with their parents. All of this meant that young working class people had relative freedom from their own families although, of course, their weak economic position in general meant that they needed to faithfully serve the interests of the aristocracy who were paying their wages.

The reason why this unusual pattern of marriage is important in terms of our archetypal analysis is because marriage represents the beginning of the Adult phase of life. It is the time when the man and woman take on the responsibility that comes from starting a family of their own and becoming parents. If marriage marks the beginning of the Adult archetype, it follows that the Orphan archetype belongs to the time between puberty and marriage/childbirth. The length of this period differs between the sexes, between classes in society, and between cultures. One of the results of the WEMP was that the Orphan period of life in Western culture has been much longer than in other cultures. This trend began all the way back in the Middle Ages. But there was one demographic of society for which this was not true; you guessed it: aristocratic women.

Young aristocratic females were expected to marry shortly after puberty, move into the household of their husband, and have children. Needless to say, marriage for this class of people was entirely an economic and political transaction whose purpose was to benefit both families. The result was that aristocratic women were far more at the whim of their parents than their working-class counterparts. They were also far less likely to be able to marry somebody they cared about, let alone loved. The working-class had a relative freedom of choice of marriage partner that was denied to the aristocracy.

That brings us back to the plot of Romeo and Juliet since the story revolves around Juliet refusing to do what was expected of aristocratic women and marry whomever her parents chose. Instead, Juliet marries for love, and this ends in death for both her and Romeo. Although Shakespeare was not interested in making any kind of moral judgement about this, it’s certain that most of his audience in Elizabethan times would have interpreted the tragic outcome as fitting since marrying for love instead of duty was seen to be morally questionable at that time. Most people would have thought that Juliet brought it on herself by choosing reckless love over the sage advice of her parents.

It was exactly this attitude which changed in the two centuries after Romeo and Juliet was premiered. It is no coincidence that Shakespeare enjoyed a massive surge in popularity in the early 19th century. That popularity came mostly among the aristocracy and educated classes of that time, who were in the process of rebelling against what they saw as the outdated and stuffy pretences of the old guard. This was the time when Romanticism became the dominant Weltanschauung among educated elites, and, according to this way of thinking, Juliet was 100% justified in pursuing love for its own sake even when it conflicted with familial duty and even when it brought about her downfall.

This change in attitude was not just an arbitrary aesthetic or moral issue. It was tied in with the breakdown of the Orphan identity that had existed for aristocratic women since the Middle Ages. The purpose of the arranged marriages of the aristocracy was economic and political; however, the economics and politics of the Western world were in a state of rapid change and uncertainty in the 19th century. The rise of democracy and capitalism was fast destroying the old aristocratic paradigm. It is no coincidence that the feminist movement was strongest in the Anglo countries since Britain and America were the ones pursuing democracy and capitalism the most fervently. They were the societies where the old paradigm was quickly becoming irrelevant.

The arranged marriages of the aristocracy no longer served a purpose, and they were gradually abandoned. That wasn’t a problem for aristocratic men who were well placed to transition into the new social arrangements. It also wasn’t a problem for the working-class who had been working before marriage for centuries and had been the the lifeblood of capitalism from the start. But it was a major problem for aristocratic women. As the need for an early marriage disappeared, they found themselves without an identity to transition into. Their Orphan period of life had been thrown into limbo. It was as a response to this identity crisis that modern feminism arose. We’ll sketch out the details of that in next week’s post.