James F. Hamilton

The Problem of Evil in Sand's La Mare au diable and Carl Jung, The Ideology of Sentiment

Abstract My thesis insists on the theme of evil implicit in Sands title to her pastoral novel, La Mare au diable (1846). The question of evil as death (le mal métaphysique) stands out in her preface, opens her novel, and defines the challenge faced by the hero in social prejudice (le mal social) and in the heroic journey to overcome internalized obstacles such as fear (le mal psychologique) in order to transform his values. The interplay between good and evil culminating in “the devils pond” intuits Jungs theory of the convergence of good and evil and the necessity of the latter in the maturation process. The victory of the hero, Germain, is also that of Sand who rises above the ideological partisanship of her opening chapters to bring to life inspirational values open to all.

Connecting Atala and René: The Senex and Puer Archetypes

he connection between Chateaubriand’s Atah ( 1 801) and R e d (1802) is expressed best by the interaction of the two protagonists in both novellas. In A d z , Chactas, a Sachem or Wise Old Man of the T Natchez tribe in Louisiana, describes the great love of his life as a youth to his companion, a young French adventurer, who in turn relates his formative experiences to his elderly mentor in Red. Each takes turn at being narrator and narratee, subject and object, confessor and confidant of a personal story centering on an idealized woman figure-Atala and AmClie. Chactas and RenC, old man and youth, separated by race, culture, and country of origin, are nevertheless drawn together in body and soul. Indeed, their relationship is cast psychologically as that of father and adopted son. Any latent oedipal issue is resolved (but at the price of incestuous overtones) by the giving of Chactas’s daughter, Celuta, to RenC in marriage.’ Their friendship remains triangulated by a feminine mystique that unites the two heroes in an unconscious quest for perfect harmony2 In this regard, Louisiana is referred to by the narrator as “the new Eden” (30), and Chactas’s name means “harmonious voice” (37). The Chactas-Red dyad, founded in archetype and myth, opens literature and history to an expanded meaning that remains inaccessible to other approaches, despite their indisputable value in explaining Chactas and RenC as “ambiguous” aspects of the same “I” (Barbiris 104). “the psychological experience of the double” (Respaut 1 G), and as similar but “unassimilated” characters (Roulin 99). Amplification of the dyad is made possible by viewing the two heroes as embodiments of bipolar archetypes, the Senex and h e r , “a coinage of late pagan antiquity” whereby a ‘‘Split” in the age-youth polarity reflects a cultural, historical crisis in the inner world of complexes and in the world around us (Curtius qtd. by