Kaleidoscope: The Way of Woman and Other Essays (1992) is a collection of essays covering the
writing of Helen Luke (1904-1995) from 1962 to 1992. It is an examination of
women from multiple perspectives, from history, myths, legends, movies,
stories, poems, musical compositions, and novels, collated into three sections:
(1) The Way of Woman, (2) The Way of Discrimination, and (3) The Way of Story.
Some of the women mentioned include Persephone, Eowyn, Dindrane, Guinevere,
Joan of Arc, Brunhilde, and Gutrune.
The
first section, The Way of Woman, explores a myriad of themes: equality vs
difference; mother-son experience; father-daughter experience; feminist freedom
vs misuse of freedom; being protected vs protective; loss of youth; ought to vs
should do; being seen vs being heard; individualism vs collective
consciousness; relating to others of the same sex; virgin vs whore; women
priests as brides of Christ vs blood of Christ, and the cat archetype.
For
example, in her essay on the cat archetype, she discusses Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories which features animals –
“the horse becomes man’s willing servant and the dog becomes man’s “first
friend,” but the cat becomes neither servant nor friend … she will kill mice,
she will purr, she will play with the baby … she can see in the dark.” The cat
is a feminine symbol, yet “independence and the hunting instinct might be
superficially thought to be masculine qualities … the gentleness of the cat’s soft
paw and the sudden claw is truly feminine.”
In
the second section, The Way of Discrimination, Luke provides essays on choice
vs free will; the sense of humour; the level of friendships; and the marriage
vow. In the third section, The Way of
Story, she presents essays on An African Tale (the story of a woman’s necklace
of beads, and the stone on the path), The Hunter and the Hunted, and stories
from religious texts – from Jacob, Saul, and the Exodus – with quotes such as
“You are beautiful, but you are empty.”
The
collection of essays is both an objective and subjective examination of
womanhood, written for women and men, but more so for the author herself. The
title, Kaleidoscope, comes from her own revelations: “As I lay writing these
things … I was aware of seemingly incoherent images of all sorts just over the
edge of consciousness, and I felt again the fear of fragmentation … Our view
for most of the time of all the little colored chips of life is meaningless,
has no form, but if we could only “reflect” thus, re-bend them, then we should
see the beautiful form in them …” And a quote from Charles Williams (1965) – of
which there are many throughout the book – this time from The Place of the Lion, Luke writes: “Balance – and movement in
balance, as an eagle sails up on the wind – this was the truth of life, and
beauty in life."
While
I don’t agree with all that is written, neither does the author. Luke questions
her initial thoughts, readings and essays, and how they have changed over 30
years of writing. She is not bitter, and she is beautiful, but she is not empty.
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