The novel The Temple of My Familiar by Walker Alice is a work of literature, which has explicitly applied various literary elements to accomplish the author’s aim of showing moral truth. The Temple of My Familiar‘s first publication occurred in 1989 (Walker 1). Walker introduces multiple characters, plots, themes and locations by entwining various narratives that relate to each other to accomplish her purpose. The Temple of My Familiar indicates the author’s use of archetypes through the themes, characters, plots, as well as symbols in the book. Ideally, these archetypes in Walker’s literature work also prevail in Estés Clarissa Pinkola’s Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Patterns in literature are essential for various reasons, which this paper will illustrate through the analysis of archetypical elements in Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar while connecting it to Estés’ book.
The book Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Estés explores various themes to guide the reader towards the author’s illustration of the womanhood. Estés’ book discusses the Wild Woman archetype, which preferably is an enlightened female-led by various principles. The author of the book has applied several archetype themes that offer the reader a different perspective on the issue. Some of the topics focus on increasing the readers’ self-awareness. Other themes aim at warning about the negative implications of asserting their internal Wild Woman. The archetype of goddess worship prevails in Estés’ book. One instance is in the scene where she narrates about Mother Earth Goddess, namely, Demeter as well as Goddess Baubo (Estés 249). The purpose of the archetype is promoting self-awareness in women, which assists in accomplishing Estés’ goal of enlightening and warning her readers about the Wild Woman. Hence, the theme of goddess worship appearing in multiple themes represents a significant archetype in accomplishing her focus.
Walker has employed multiple themes in her book to unify the different narratives in her novel, but several themes are archetypical. The first theme is that of racism and slavery as a hindrance to self-awareness. The primary prevalence of the topic of slavery and racism is from Lissie’s conversations. Lissie addresses the issue when she talks about black women’s experiences. Besides, Walker argues that apart from racism affecting black people, the experience of women is more adverse compared to men. From these themes, the slave archetype appears, and its importance is the illustration of enlightenment. Resultantly, it is vital in women’s self-awareness premise in the novel. Another pattern that emanates from the themes of Walker’s book is goddess worship. One of the scenes is where the author indicates that both men and women initially adored and acknowledged that the earth’s producer was a goddess (Walker 54). Decisively, The Temple of My Familiar gives various qualities to goddesses to elicit fear, adoration and worship from other characters precisely. This goddess worship archetype has a significant role in uplifting the women characters in Walker’s novel.
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The use of goddess worship as an archetypical theme in The Temple of My Familiar is comparable to Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Both books use goddess worship to illustrate authority, which, in turn, is an essential element in promoting self-awareness in women. From a scene in The Temple of My Familiar, Walker talks about the goddess Medusa and portrays her as a supernatural being with wings (Walker 282). Medusa is the black female who is the mother of the African culture. Thus, the archetype of goddess worship in this concept illustrates a being with distinct looks but bears immense value.
Similar to in The Temple of My Familiar, Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype also shows goddess worship using distinctive beings from humans. Using various scenes, Estés has illustrated the goddesses Baubo and Demeter in her book. The author describes the Goddess Baubo dancing with Demeter and portrays an image of her as headless (Estés 246). Nevertheless, Goddess Baubo sees with her nipples while she uses her vulva as her mouth. The image that Estés’ depicts of the Goddess Baubo is that of a being that does not resemble humans. Therefore, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype shows a similarity with Walker’s use of the goddess worship archetype by illustrating goddesses as beings with strange looks.
The uses of the archetype of goddess worship in Walker’s book and in Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype differ from each other. From Walker’s book, The Temple of My Familiar goddess worship mainly appears as an element that enlightens and uplifts the female characters. Ideally, this is evident from the scene where Walker narrates that both men and women worshipped the goddess. Arveyda describes to Carlotta about a goddess, adored by both men and women. Besides, the better the looks of the goddesses, the more they seemed supernatural (Walker 130). Thus, this perspective of goddess worship, as indicated by Walker acknowledges and uplifts women.
On the other hand, Estés’ book is indicative of a different approach to the archetypical of goddess worship. Estés claims that ancient goddess worship featured aspects relating to sacred obscenity (Estés 246). However, the word obscene in ancient times bears a different meaning that is indicative of wisdom in a humorous way. Obscenity is vital as an element of sanctified sexuality as well as in the reclaiming the Wild Woman. However, in contemporary times, the aspect of obscenity could realize a different definition that is offensive. From the vulgar perspective of the goddess, precisely their sacred sexuality, it poses a barrier. Unlike walker’s approach that enlightens and uplifts goddesses, the aspect of the ancient goddesses of obscenity is challenging to achieve the same goal due to a different definition of the concept in the modern world.
The use of archetype in literature is an effective way that authors apply to develop and efficiently narrate complex narratives. Both The Temple of My Familiar and Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype show various archetypes. Walker has incorporated different patterns like goddess worship that has assisted her to articulate her narration. While comparing and contrasting Walker’s works Estés, it is notable that archetypes are vital to not only the reader but in increasing the author’s efficacy of expressing their viewpoint.
