Archetypal figures in Marguerite Duras's India Song: a Jungian perspective

Abstract

This article seeks to extend recent applications of C.G. Jung's theories to Hollywood cinema through a study of archetypal images in Marguerite Duras's film India Song (1974). Drawing on Jung's theory of contrasexual archetypes, the article explores the different representations of the female and the male protagonists of India Song. It examines the triple image of Anne-Marie Stretter as mother, goddess and femme fatale, arguing that while this construction of ‘the feminine’ corresponds to Duras's personal obsessions, the director was nevertheless able to maintain a critical distance from them by both dramatizing and subverting the archetypes she projected on to the film. The article then demonstrates how, by contrast with the hypefemininity of Anne-Marie Stretter, the Vice-Consul is represented as a more integrated figure, capable of combining the psychological functions of animus and anima. In terms of the film's narrative, it is suggested that the patriarchal repression of the female animus is the source of Anne-Marie Stretter's fragmentation and suicide at the end of India Song.