11. Conclusion

Philosophically, the play leaves us with several impressions. First, there is the generally negative view toward humanity as a bundle of uncontrolled passions, like a sea in which the big fish are simply those who have eaten the most little fish, i.e. the most powerful are simply the most greedy. The exceptions, like King Simonides, shine through in a way that is discernible even to men devoted to their appetites. The general picture is one of lights shining individually in a larger darkness in which they are trapped. The world per se is not evil, and the people in it are, many of them, redeemable. In this regard the world of Pericles does not differ from that of orthodox Medieval Christianity. Where the difference lies is in the portrayal of the redeeming force; Shakespeare's world conceives at least one of its forms as the incarnation of the divine feminine principle, not as simply a receptacle of the redeemer or an intercessor to him but as a transformative agent in her own right, a bearer of light when manifested by the imagination, bringing about the individual's rebirth. All this is reminiscent both of Jungian psychology and of ancient texts of the Gnostic Sophia working to open humanity's eyes in a world dominated by evil.

To this general summary I would add some final observations. First I want to compare the world of the play to the world of Gnostic texts. In Pericles, the body and the natural world are not inherently evil, for marriage with sex is to be sought and the world to be enjoyed; it is rather humanity's appetites plus the gift of an uncommon ability to satisfy them that when unrestrained fouls our world. Whether such a viewpoint is held by our Gnostic texts, which tend to speak of matter in general as something to be overcome, is not clear. What I think is clear is that often evil is not chosen by the individual, a choice of evil over good as in orthodox Christianity's version of “original sin.” It is rather--e.g. for the daughter of Antiochus, for the King of Tarsus, or even for Lysimachus--a situation in which one finds oneself and which takes special endowments, effort, insight, or teaching to overcome. This, too, is a Gnostic insight about our world, reflected in the difference between the Gnostic and orthodox versions of the Garden of Evil myth. In the former, humanity finds itself in a world made by forces of darkness and kept ignorant of its true home and destiny by those forces; in the latter, humanity is in a benevolent world and chooses evil of its own arrogant free will. Shakespeare's world in Pericles, with some ambivalence, is the former; and I hope the continued popularity of his works reflects a growing realization that, at least metaphorically, it is our world as well.

The second topic I wish to end with is the Jungian equivalent of the Gnostic perspective. The play is about the maturation of the anima, or unconscious image of the feminine in a man. Jung (1966/1946) gave four stages of the anima. I will describe them from the perspective of what kind of offspring each would produce for him. The lowest image, which Jung calls "Eve," produces a biological child, from a biological attraction. The second, Jung's “medium” or “medial woman,” who responds to his unconscious side in all its complexity, and has his own unconscious as her product, laid out before him. The third stage, that of the "Virgin Mary," produces the divine child, in whom there is no evil. Lastly is the wisdom-figure, "Sophia," who gives him the mystery of his own being, integrating the previous stages in all their contradictoriness. .

Our play has anima-figures on all four levels, not exactly the same as Jung’s but close. Each is an inner product, fathered by the individual at that particular level. First, the anima as “Eve,” the longed-for powerless sex object; this of course is the daughter incestuously related to by Antiochus. It corresponds to the hylic, or material, level of humanity. The second level is the anima as that which provides access to the admired ideals of consciousness and rationality, i.e. the princess who is daughter to the divinely guided inner king, the “Virgin Mary” in Jung's schema. That, of course, is Thaisa, corresponding to the psychic man or the ordinary Christian or Jew, who aspires to a nobility recognized by reason.

What corresponds in our play to Jung’s “medial woman,” who lays out a man’s unconsciousness for him? Jung seems to have seen her as an intuitive interpreter of a man’s unconscious, revealing to him things of which he himself is unaware. In that sense, Diana in the dream would be Pericles’ medial woman. But it seems to me there are less exalted examples as well, even negative ones. In our play, there is Dionyza, the jealous foster-mother, whom Pericles picks to care for the infant Marina. Her name suggests the female followers of Dionysus, who in Greek myth did violent acts in unconscious frenzies, such as dismembering their own sons (as portrayed in Euripides’ The Bacchae). Dionyza responds to Pericles’ unconscious abandonment of his child by abandoning her herself, in the most extreme sense. What actually happens is something of which she is unconscious, yet which furthers the theme of abandonment even more, in ways leading to transformation. In Shakespeare, other examples might be King Lear’s eldest daughters, who respond to his unconscious needs for admiration and then, by rejecting him, unconsciously set the stage for his transformation. The witches in Macbeth, and Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, might also fit this model.

Marina, of course, is the last stage, corresponding to “Sophia.” As an image, she is a product of both the world of ideals and of the unconscious, for it is by a series of unconscious acts that she is thrown into the world of matter at its lowest, circumstances which correspond to those of the lower Sophia. Psychologically, she is the product of the interaction between reason and the unconscious; she is the unconscious as sorted out, purified through successive creations of the unconscious and the reflection upon such creations, such as a Jungian might produce in active imagination.

I have been telling all of this as though the play were made to be seen only by men. Despite just such prejudices in the reign of James I, Shakespeare learned his craft under the rule of Elizabeth. So let us try to look at the play from the perspective of a woman. Just as the anima can be characterized in terms of the father’s image of the father, the animus can be thought of in terms of the daughter's image of the father. She is dependent but seductive for the image of the biological father She is graceful but independent-minded for the noble father. She resourceful and faithful to an inner idealized image for the absent idealized father. Others can then recognize these animus-traits. Lysimachus sees Marina in all three ways; that is her attraction for him. Despite his obvious conventionality, he is in a position to see and love them all, and is thereby worthy of being her mate.