A. Ambrosius

12/1/2012

A New Country for Old Women

            In a culture and era of the compulsory denial of age, and the privilege of youth over wisdom or ignorance over experience, elder women continue to be marginalized, ignored, and mis-read. Popular conceptions of literature bear this out. In a Wikipedia list of popular literary stock characters, the only roles available for elder women seem deliberately unserious or disrespectful. According to this list, old women can be widows who are considered foolish for engaging in or exhibiting sexual desire despite their lack of reproductive ability, or crones/hags, who are deemed malevolent, the devourers of small children and predators upon desirable, nubile young women. In our culture, Dorothy Becvar asserts, “the image of the older woman has been radically transformed in a negative direction,” into our familiar wicked witch or ridiculous widow (20). The socially respected wise crone has become all but ignored.

            However the numbers can not be ignored. The US will soon have  unprecedented numbers of elder people who should be visible and functional in our society. This population, which skews heavily female due to differences in life expectancy, will hopefully not be content to shrink into rocking chairs and fall silent. Cultural room needs to be made for the knowledge, insight, and strength of elder women, our beloved crones.  Ageism and misogyny, as well as bigotry, soft and hard, based upon dis/ability, class, and minority status are all avenues for the fundamental disregard of elder women.  Despite the fact that mainstream United States culture has little place for an elder woman who is not Betty White, wonderfully gifted though she is, texts available in minority American literature display the roles that the crone plays in parts of our culture, and suggest clues about how to successfully welcome her and integrate her on a broader scale.

            Defining the crone is simultaneously very easy and very difficult. In a culture that has seemingly systematically varnished over any of her presence, she can be identified simply as an old woman, but this limited definition obscures all of the nuances of symbol and power with which she was once identified. Barbara Walker and other scholars of pre-Christian, pre-patriarchal religion and society are comfortable dealing with the female divine, as uncomfortable as many modern people may be with the concept. Modern practitioners of goddess-based religions may join Walker and scholars in recognizing a trinitarian representation of the goddess. The female divine can be divided in to three aspects: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. According to Walker,  “Divine Providence,” the “Wise Goddess,” was considered to be endowed with the trait of wisdom as late as the 16^th century in Europe (61). In this, her more modern European aspect, she was divided into “Sapientia creans, the Creatress; Sapientia disponans, the Disposer; and Sapienta gubernans, the Ruler” (61). Walker also links this trinitarian division of female divinity to “the [older] Oriental female trinity of Creator, Preserver, Destroyer,” although Walker notes that goddess worship had also been predominant in Europe prior to the spread of the Roman Catholic Church (61). The maiden is allied with female youth, while the mother is predictably classed with partnership, family, stewardship, and work. The crone aspect was revered as “aged mothers of the prehistoric tribe ceased to menstruate,” as the “wise blood” “retained in the body for another wonderful purpose”was considered to be “the source of their wisdom” (Walker 49). The crone represents the aged, experienced woman who has seen and done much. According to Becvar, this figure gains a sense of community responsibility with her experience; “having lived long and experienced much, the Crone accepted the responsibilities of a woman of age, including the challenge to distill what had been learned into wisdom that could be shared” (21).  Barbara Walker argues that the Crone “commanded respect. Her advice was sought. Her community looked up to her and took her ideas seriously,” meaning that cultures took the advantage of the wisdom of the most experienced people among them (175). From the Hindu Kali to the Irish Caillech, crone figures were considered to be gifted with the additional third eye of “mystical insight” (Walker 77). Those who failed to consider the insight made possible by a lifetime of observation of the foibles, weaknesses, troubles, and delights of humanity would doubtless consider this knowledge mystical, instead of practical.

            In addition to the broader cultural powers ascribed to crones, they also have more particular associations with specific talents and symbols. The crone's status as attendant at birth and death makes her an uncomfortably powerful character to engage. The perception of the crone as the unified “Mother Death” acknowledges the feminine role in birth, sex, and death, roles that people no longer seem to feel comfortable acknowledging as potentially present in every woman for any purposes other than those of objectification (Walker 82).  According to Henneberg the crone is connected to the particulars of the seasons of all lives as well as to those of individual lives; “in addition to her role relative to the cycles of life and death, the Crone also was the teacher who facilitated the ability to see the future as well as the past. She was the keeper of the details of all people’s lives” (21). Crones have historically suffered due to social ambivalence and confusion regarding their personal knowledge, as well as their knowledge of the folk healing arts, especially with their displacement by the powers of the male-dominated Christian church. The cauldron, another confused symbol of the crone and femininity, served plural functions as a symbol of the Goddess, women,  and as “one of the most useful articles in the kitchen,” reflecting the multiple nature of woman herself (Walker 121).  As Walker states, many myths “insisted that the aspiring Father God was obliged to steal his power and/or wisdom from some version of the Mother's vessel, before he could seriously claim domination over the world” (100). One such story shows the Norse god Odin ingesting the ingredients of the “three cauldrons in the womb of Earth” and thereby gaining “knowledge of reading and writing the runes, mastery of magic, shape-shifting ability, and understanding of cosmic matters, which were formerly the Goddess's exclusive property” (Walker 100).  Additionally,  flight was associated with the crone because of her association with death and age and her participation in the care of the dying; “flying was the archetypal model of the soul's journey to heaven” and crones, “skywalkers, sylphs, fairies, or guardian angels were thought able to transform themselves into” a number of flying creatures, notably including “owls” (Walker 74). The owl was associated with the crone, according to Walker  as “a totem,” and as “a bird of enlightenment” (62). Given the crone's recognition as a source and storehouse of wisdom, they “were credited with the important religious or magical lore . . . that led them to formulate laws and other rules of behavior” (Walker 49). The crone's folk knowledge connects to Becvar's observation that to live like a crone requires one understand that “mind and nature form a necessary unity” (21). These wise, unpredictable women were powerful embodiments of authority and sources of continuity for ancient human communities. Clara Sue Kidwell echoes these old systems of belief when she analyzes the changes that have happened to women's and cultural stories after European contact, writing that “women are the creators of the world. Their lives carry the meaning of the great human cycle of life, death, and rebirth, an ongoing process that Christianity forces into a linear paradigm of individual sin, guilt, death, and redemption” (149). The cycle that Kidwell cites is well-known to those who study human worship of the goddess; Walker cites early Hindu belief in Kali-Ma as a destroyer, but also as a “creatrix,” a “Goddess” who “rules all cycles” (71).  The crone phase of the Goddess became edged out overwhelmingly when “male dominant societies . . . tried to simplify the complex Goddess by dissecting a saint or madonna stereotype out of her multifaceted character” (Walker 88). Despite the fact that her knowledge has undergone centuries of neglect and disrespect by the dominant European-Anglo-American culture, the crone persists in examples of minority literature that may give readers a guide and a model for the social placement and respect of elder women. Because minority families in American culture are more likely to include many generations, the literature itself is more likely to avoid the ageist exclusion that literature of the  mainstream, dominant culture may help to perpetuate.

            Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya illustrates the intersections of power and belief that have happened in Mexican-American culture during its long period of intermingling of native Mexican, European, and, finally, American cultural standards. The trends of belief mimic those of pre-Christian Europe and the changes the cultures experienced due to their contact with the Roman Catholic Christian religion and religious power establishments. In a form true to the age-exclusionary dominant culture, much of the criticism and scholarship of Anaya's novel focuses on the journey of the main character, Antonio.  Yet, Ultima, the novel's titular crone is a powerful cultural symbol of syncretism and symbiosis. Her own journey demonstrates the long path of power, mis-reading, and forgetting that has covered the crone in obscurity.

      Ultima is clearly a crone, and she suffers much of what crones throughout Western history have in the common instances when their power has demonized. This is in keeping with the trends of the dominant power; at one point, “churchmen” to have “diabolized, masculinized, or quietly dropped” references to female power and divinity, in instances where they could not be commanded to do the bidding of the dominant class (Walker 64).  Many of the characters in the novel seem unclear as to whether Ultima is a curandera or a bruja, the Mexican cultural equivalents of healer/good witch and evil witch, respectively; their ambivalence is between the faith of the people and the power of the church. Ultima is allied with folk knowledge, which Kidwell argues became the province of women in American cultures because of their invisibility to European documenters and exploiters of native cultures. Such invisibility for women meant or means that often, “in situations of contact, women often become the custodians of traditional cultural values” (Kidwell 150). Ultima's guardianship of the old ways aligns her with the ancient functions of the elder woman, especially in a culture that has had the profound experiences of contact and the resulting cultural evolutions. The crone's knowledge and gifts come from nature, time, experience, and observation; from these things, she derives her power. Paul Beekman Taylor asserts that “Ultima turns eschatologial story away from Christian reward and grace . . . to the sentient good of harmony with all living things” in concordance with “ancient Aztec myth” (256).  Ultima is inextricably identified with nature; the book itself opens  with Antonio's reflection of her arrival, upon which “the beauty of the llano unfolded itself before [his] eyes . . . the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into [his] living blood . . . and the silent magic powers she possessed made beauty from the raw, sun-baked llano, the green river valley, and the blue bowl which was the white sun's home” (Anaya 1). When Antonio assimilates Ultima's gaze which sees meaning in the landscape and healing in the plants, he understands the beauty of his natural environment. Ultima takes Antonio to gather “wild herbs and roots for her medicines,” a seemingly unimportant venture that illustrates Ultima's crone-knowledge of both natural resources as well as healing (39).  Like Becvar's crone, Ultima unifies nature and mind. She also teaches Antonio to be thankful to the plants and also to gather more mundane herbs,  ones so commonly known that Antonio's mother, “who was surely not a curandera,” uses them,  such as the practical and flavorful “orégano” (40). However, Ultima mixes her medicines in a bowl, a less-burdensome stand in for the archetypal cauldron. Ultima is also linked with the power of nature through her owl, who Antonio sees in a dream, working syncretically to comfort the souls of the unbaptized infants that the patriarchal God is content to leave in limbo (Anaya 13).  She believes in “building strength from life,” a realization that the reader and Tony come to when pondering her method of survival in changing times; Ultima's power comes from her ability to “make something new” from the many shapes in which humans find power, comfort and strength (Anaya 247). This syncretic approach reflects a flexible  practicality, instead of dogmatic rigidity, which is prone to breaking. Therefore, when Ultima blesses Tony and his mother before he leaves, she blesses them without “using the name of the Trinity like [his] mother, and yet her blessing was as holy”(245-246).  Anaya reveals that it is Ultima's sympathy for others that gifts her with the power to heal and understand. This sympathy “[overcomes] all obstacles” and can “defeat evil where all else had failed” (255). The encroaching rules of men and a patriarchal God cannot handle all situations in this book, and they fail to pin down the specific answers, or even the specific questions that plague Antonio's growing mind.

          Ultima gifts Antonio with advice and guidance that points him along his journey, but she too withholds specific answers, which is not to say that she does not have answers. She withholds direction in order to allow the young man to come to his own conclusions, asserting that she “cannot tell” him “what to believe (Anaya 119).  Ultima teaches Antonio many things, but the best of what she teaches him comes from her experience and her lack of desire to dictate the destiny of another person. In this way, Ultima lives by the rules that Becvar has set out for herself as a crone, acting not to control another's live, but acting instead as to “to shed light on the situation,” allowing her beloved youth “to see things more clearly (Becvar 22). From her vantage point atop a hill of time, Ultima tells Tony to be prepared for change, as she does not have the illusion that things stay the same, despite human desire for continuity. She tells him, “'You are growing, and growth is change. Accept the change and make it part of your strength ---'” (Anaya 245).  Taylor notes Ultima's function as a guide for Antonio, writing that “the Chicana mother and the curandera mediate the Chicano's quest for his own place on the landscape” (245).  Ultima's connection with nature and landscape means that when Antonio “[watches] her carefully and [imitates] her walk,” he discovers that he is “no longer lost in the enormous landscape of hills and sky (Anaya 40).  Ultima additionally orients Antonio during their herb-gathering, telling him “the stories and legends of [his] ancestors, in order to give him context for himself and for his choices for the future (123). This profound concern about place and destiny resound with both the concerns of culture and age. For the way forward, the culture looks to its effaced past to settle itself  after several centuries of contact and conflict. However, the relationship between Antonio and Ultima also tells an older story of the relationship between the young and the old; the youth seeks understanding and knowledge from the wise old woman.  The community also seeks her aid in situations that require power beyond that of men and the church, in keeping with Walker's estimations of the social power and responsibility of the crone.

          When Tony's uncle, Lucas Luna, falls under the spell of evil women, the family calls upon a specialist from Las Vegas, a practitioner of American scientific medicine, and the Catholic priest from the village. These sources of assistance do not help and refuse to get too involved, respectively (Anaya 84). Lucas is cursed by a family who bears a grudge against Ultima and Antonio's family, and Ultima, with her “magic beyond evil,” consents to heal the young man (84). The Luna family's respect for her abilities is evident; when Ultima arrives, she is greeted with the title “médica,” and her desires for non-interference will be complied with because “when a curandera was working a cure, she was in charge” (91-2). Her authority is compounded when Lucas is healed, and she earns the active loyalty of the Luna family. Ultima is also sought when the Téllez family, whose home and farm have come under attack by Ultima's enemies, seek assistance after the local priest's administration of holy water has failed. Ultima has shared some of her folk history knowledge, the “stories and legends . . . the glory and tragedy of the history of [Antonio's] people,” with the boy (123). Due to her knowledge of the Comanche Indian tribe that previously inhabited the area and their conflict with prior generations of the Téllez family, Ultima is able to diagnose the trouble.  She directs funeral rites for the troubled spirits of those who had long before inhabited the area, exhibiting compassion for the spirituality and history of those who had come before (233). It is telling that in the two cases in which Ultima is sought for assistance, the authorities of man and God have failed, and in the latter situation, the failure can be completely attributed to a lack of understanding history. Additionally, this symbolic burial compounds Ultima's role as crone; she is the midwife who saw to Antonio's birth as well as the mediator for the spirits of those who did not receive an appropriate burial according to their customs.

            In a capitalist, technologically advanced society full of people willing to pay for that which gives them the mere illusion of youth, what is the point of the crone? As Ursula K. LeGuin has been quoted, in our society, “it requires fanatical determination now to become a Crone” (qtd in Becvar 21). In their efforts satisfactorily sum up answers to the question of age and social standing, authors and age theorists are confounded by repetitive issues; Simone De Beauvoir observed a “'conspiracy of silence' surrounding aging and old age (qtd in Henneberg 106). Sylvia Henneberg also cites Kathleen Woodward's assertion that “American society” continues to be “'culturally illiterate about aging'” (106).   The crone's marginalization has cut our culture off from an important source of honesty. She has been effectively marginalized in a multitude of ways. Henneberg cites Adrienne Rich's lament of our culture, divisive along the lines of age and class and the effects “'are devastating. . . to a generation of youth. The loss to the whole society is incalculable'” (qtd in 120). To counter this trend, Henneberg cites Margaret Morganroth Guillete who counsels “resistance to an 'age fragmentation. . . constructed by dominant culture'” that impedes “'intergenerational solidarity'” (qtd in 120). In such a segmented society, the story of Antonio and Ultima becomes less and less likely, with only more potential damage to the future. The crone's marginalization has been effected so emphatically because, Walker asserts, “in human patriarchal societies by the mere fact of having lived to old age in a 'man's world,' most elder women would have learned things . . . that few men would want openly discussed” (66). The “ancient figure of elder woman as judge” is particularly terrifying for a dominant culture that has been willing to label her insane or obsolete, as if all of our sins might be cast back in our faces if we were to recognize the power of the crone (Walker 66).

            However, our desire for knowledge must displace our poorly-examined cultural notions regarding women and age. The crone's understanding of the past as story and the future as change means that she is particularly well-equipped to deal with the inescapable coming crises of sustainability, survival, and adaptability.  The crone represents a powerful image of adapting human ways of being with nature and circumstance; “like nature she was not to be manipulated by flattery . . . One had to learn to exist within her framework . . .Who would plant in the season of harvest, or who could expect to win love by hateful behavior?” (Walker 175).  Ultima can be a helpful guide, as Henneberg asserts that using literary studies to approach aging can “radicalize our notions about aging” and make room for more expertise to solve some of the most critical problems that humanity may have ever faced (Henneberg 122). Therefore the crone and our documented connection to her, in our past and in parts of our culture that still have not forgotten her, are more necessary now than she may have ever been.

Works Cited

Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. New York Warner Books 1972. Print.

Becvar, Dorothy. “Tracking the Archetype of the Wise Woman/Crone.” ReVision 28.1      (2005): 20- 23. EBSCO. Web. 27 Nov 2012.

Kidwell, Clara Sue. “What Would Pocahontas Think Now?: Women and Cultural     Perspective.” Callaloo 17.1 (1994): 149-59.  JSTOR. Web. 20 Nov 2012.

“List of stock characters.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.   Wikimedia Foundation,    Inc. Web. 24 Sept 2012.

Taylor, Paul Beekman. “Chicano Secrecy in the Fiction of Rudolfo A. Anaya.” Journal of   the Southwest 39.2  (1997): 239-65. JSTOR. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.

Walker, Barbara A. The Crone. New York: Harper and Row, 1985. Print.