"I am spinning this for you, my child": Voice and Identity Formation in George MacDonald's Princess Books

Abstract

“I am spinning this for you, my child”:Voice and Identity Formation in George MacDonald’s Princess Books Ruth Y. Jenkins (bio) Abstract By applying Julia Kristeva’s theories of the dynamic relationship between the semiotic and symbolic, Jenkins illustrates the complicated relationships between voice and identity formation that are central to MacDonald’s Princess books and his adolescent readers. Jenkins shows how the harmonic imagination that MacDonald constructs in The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and The Princess and Curdie (1882) enable and replicate the process of identity formation. Consequently, rather than reiterate culturally prescribed scripts for fixed identities, narratives such as MacDonald’s Princess books may provide alternative descriptions and opportunities for non-conventional experience. George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and The Princess and Curdie (1882) have long captivated readers of both children's literature and adult fantasy. Equally fascinated, scholars continue to direct critical attention toward these narratives from spiritual to folkloric, literary to linguistic perspectives.1 Recently William N. Gray, in "George MacDonald, Julia Kristeva, and the Black Sun," and Deborah Thacker, in "Feminine Language and the Politics of Children's Literature," have reexamined MacDonald's texts using current psychoanalytic theories of language and identity.2 Both apply the concepts of Julia Kristeva to his texts, but whereas Gray shows how Phantastes (1858) illustrates individual transformation from an object-relations perspective, Thacker reconsiders the Princess books through feminist reworkings of Lacanian theory. Although Gray and Thacker produce fresh readings of MacDonald's texts, neither sufficiently articulates the extent to which Kristeva's theories illuminate the richness of the Princess books in the context of his spiritual beliefs and identity formation. Kristeva's description of the dynamic relationship between the semiotic (noncommunicative articulations) and symbolic (signification) is useful for understanding the signifying process as it relates to identity formation. Like a thin membrane through which the semiotic permeates, the thetic phase functions as a "threshold" of language and organizes semiotic energy into the symbolic (Revolution 45); energy that cannot yet be so organized remains semiotic. The tic phase posits the signifiable object, the deepest structure of possibility (Revolution 54; Moi 99). Named "transposition" by Kristeva, this process highlights the passage from one sign system to another, a passage that involves an "altering of [End Page 325] the thetic position—the destruction of the old position and the formation of a new one" (59). 3 Transposition, then, produces the "plural, shattered" quality of the object of enunciation, and consequently, "polysemy can also be seen as the result of a semiotic polyvalence—an adherence to different sign systems" (59-60). Understanding the polyvalence that occurs in transposition is central to recognizing the value of texts such as MacDonald's for the adolescent reader and even their significance as textual constructions. Although Gray does not consider Phantastes in the context of an adolescent audience, his reading of that text has implications for analyzing the relationship between those readers and the texts. Gray points to the failure of MacDonald "to follow through Kristeva's dialectic of the semiotic and symbolic" at the conclusion of Phantastes, a failure that results in a "precariousness of the subject-position" (891). I would like to suggest, however, that this "precariousness of subject-position" is key to understanding both MacDonald's vision and the value of his texts for adolescent readers. Kristeva posits that the "thetic originates in the 'mirror stage' and is completed . . . in puberty" (Revolution 62), psychological stages central to identity formation. Adolescents, at their own threshold to adulthood, negotiate various energies and drives—verbal, emotional, and physical—in their efforts to transition into socially functioning adults. Consequently, analyzing how MacDonald's Princess books illustrate the thetic phase may demonstrate their continued significance as adolescent literature. Kristeva compares the dialectical interplay between the semiotic and symbolic to weaving, yet she emphasizes that unlike finished cloth, this dynamic is not static (Revolution 5).4 The "threads" spun by semiotic drives produce the genotext, which creates poetic language; the "threads" from social, cultural, syntactic, and grammatical forces are the phenotext, which insures communication (5). Consequently, the genotext is the "advent'" of the symbolic and organizes "a space in which the subject is...