Name: Satanic Feminism
ISBN: 9789187515040

Per Faxneld

Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-century Culture

Satanic Feminism

Tim Pendry

Faxneld's exhaustive (some might think exhausting) account of the use of the idea of the Satanic in Western feminism, from the romantic era to the early twentieth century, is definitely not about feminist Satanism which does not exist (excepting perhaps one peculiar male Polish example). Be in no doubt that this is a brilliant book (especially the Introduction that lays out the terms of his inquiry) yet is about something quite marginal to mainstream culture that nevertheless throws a light on its progression through the self-liberation of relatively high status women. It is a case study in the marginal - in this case a rebellion against normality - helping to enable a new normal (with which we live today) where women no longer have to 'invent' narratives that defy mainstream culture because their concerns have become mainstream culture. Interestingly it is subversive men who kick-start this revolution, one which is centred on 'detourning' religious norms (Satan as evil and God as good) in order to effect the over-turning of political, cultural and social norms. Milton is not the revolutionary here in making Satan an attractive figure similar to Prometheus as rebel against the gods - or rather God. He has simply created a 'ready-made' that enables Romantics like Byron and Shelley to subvert society 'safely' and start introducing feminist ideas. Those feminist ideas, of course, come from women like Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley but male domination of culture at this point means that it is men who have to find the ice-pick to thrust into the brain of Biblical order. This latter is the infamous 'patriarchy' (an over-used term). There is much to unpick in this book which reads like a series of mini-monographs on the use not only of Satan but of the image of the witch (in which another man, Jules Michelet, plays an equally important role) as a succession of progressive stages towards a wider rethinking of culture. Perhaps it is best just to summarise what Faxneld has uncovered in sequence and suggest the reader then goes to that which interests them and draws their own conclusions. The author is certainly thorough in what is mostly literary criticism, building his conceptual castle brick by brick. He starts by outlining the 'recurring motifs' of the relationship between women and the devil during this period. It is not only a matter of Satan and the appropriation of witchcraft but also of a complete redrafting of Genesis, both to give greater credit to Eve or to introduce the figure of Lilith. There are many variations on these motifs but they all have in common the idea that the narrative that men and women (many of these counter-narratives are actually more broadly liberatory in intent than the role of women) accept as true (as religion) is actually false ... a lie. Faxneld, a Swedish scholar who is undoubtedly 'going places', is perhaps just scratching the surface here despite the depth of his research because what we are talking about is the transformation of an entire intercontinental mental map between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Instead of having 'big picture' historians asserting change, Faxneld is looking at the micro-phenomena that represent observable change. This subverted, arising from the middle classes, a way of seeing to which mostly men - Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud - would contribute their share. The why and how of such a transformation is a matter of economics, communication, information exchange, mobility and human interaction requiring much fresh thought but the author has provided us here with a lot of detailed evidence for the process. But let us get back to the chapters. As noted above, Faxneld starts with looking at the romantic and also early socialist uses of the devil to challenge the Church and society as a whole. He could have gone back to the Enlightenment and even seventeenth century atheism but his focus is on 'the question of woman'. He rightly sticks to that. He then reminds us of the importance of theosophical thought in early feminism (as much as in promoting pseudo-science and dodgy spiritual ideas) in one of many examples of fantasy-dissent taking what is 'to hand' in order to effect change. He steps back to look at the role of Satan or rather Satanic figures who liberate women (sometimes ambiguously) in Gothick literature although one cannot help thinking that often this might just be a classic case of introvert bluestocking girls liking bad boys ... at a literary distance. He looks at the witch in liberatory history (which is where Michelet's 'La Sorciere' comes in) where what was once presented as hideous and evil (vide Macbeth and the Malleus Malleficorum) becomes something else entirely with pseudo-anthropology now creating the necessary narrative structures. He moves on to fin-de-siecle decadence with its not very feminist attitude to women. Indeed, we could see the decadent and symbolist movements as reactionary attempts to reinvent women as creatures to be feared by men, sexual sadists with masochists forced to kneel at their feet. However, there is no idea or image in a free culture that cannot be subverted by others. What may have represented male anxieties and fears could as easily (and it seems to have been) purloined by women in order to press a cultural point to their advantage. He interjects here a chapter on the use of Satan in Lesbian contexts ('Sapphic Satanism') but more culturally important is the next chapter where the male-dominated 'satanic' female becomes appropriated as the constructed personalities of actresses and celebrities. Much as Lady Gaga constructed a persona that played on gender fluidity as a form of cultural ultra-liberalism and as the culmination of the revolution created by the original gay movement so key women 'represented' a form of liberation through the Satanic that was equally carefully manicured. Here we are getting at the core of what is happening - the woman with independent means defining herself through the market, whether as the self-defining Sarah Bernhardt, the purchases of Satanic-themed symbolist jewellery or Theda Barr performing a role to commercial order. What started as a process of rebellion against a prevailing order transforms itself over a hundred years into the cherry on the top of the cake of a new order - a commercial capitalism in which publicity means money and to which aspirant women with money could respond. The Satanic becomes respectable, more as an implied late romantic stance than anything that might actually mean belief in a force of evil to which one would assign one's soul. There is no necessity for a soul to sign away. All that underlying belief had dissipated. Once the belief system that 'oppressed' humanity had disappeared under the weight of multiple forms of intellectual criticism, once it no longer meant any meaningful rebellion against a dominant order, a new dominant order (middle class and mass markets) could play with subversion safely. Is this is not a repeated pattern in Western culture - the transformation of Count Dracula to Count Duckula, the horrible and the subversive being tamed from content into style, eventually the necessity for more horrible and subversive realities to be invented (in due course)? The final two chapters are case studies of two women writers at the end of this process - Mary Maclane and Sylvia Townsend Warner who each wrote a key work that took the Satanic Feminist theme to its probable last meaningful point but in opposite directions. Mary Maclane, as a nineteen year old, wrote a 'shocking' autobiography in 1902 that asserted her allegiance to Satan in terms that might be regarded as the ultimate in feminist liberation from all social constraints. It was, perhaps surprisingly, a major hit and 'cause celebre'. In fact, she comes across as perhaps a form of literary sociopath. She might be admired for saying what she really felt in no uncertain terms but what we have here is a 'liberation' of the self rather than the liberation of just a woman. It is just that the self happens to be a woman. The book, in essence, simply permits a woman to be any man's equal as fashionable self-regarding artistic sub-Nietzschean and, although undoubtedly talented, she was never able to 'grow up' and create a greater body of work. Mary Shelley is far more impressive. Nevertheless, as the culmination of a process that started with Byron and Shelley, Faxneld is right to draw attention to her because what was now clear was that a culture had been primed to accept (largely as entertainment) radical individualist Satanism half a century before LaVey's carny exploits. The second writer, Sylvia Townshend Warner, is represented by her subversive book 'Lolly Willowes' which has to be seen in its very English context as a highly coded use of rural witchcraft (a major source of the 'other' to the English, long before Gerald Gardner decided to appropriate it. This is a fine chapter (or essay) which shows how the ideas of the witch but also of Satan could be so completely turned their heads to become more than benign, wholly expressive of the introvert woman's desire to be left alone and be who they are. This thinking is all the more powerful for the lack of demonisation of the existing structures of society - they are simply oppressively mundane and unimaginative. It is the more surprising when you realise that Warner was inclined to a fairly hard line Communism. If Maclane represents the culmination of a self-centred aspirational middle class (and very American) 'screw you' to normality so Warner perhaps represents something more subtle - the appropriation of the rebellious other to express something quieter, more personal and more 'English'. This book, it has to be said, though very readable, is over 500 pages long. Faxneld not only insists on proving every point but linking every point to every other relevant point in the text and in the excellent foot-notes. This results in some insistent repetition of themes as if writing a symphony. However, despite this, it is a valuable and informative read with one major virtue. Despite being a man writing about feminism, he is definitely not afraid of ideologically feminist academics. This is incredibly refreshing. It is perhaps an early sign of the end of liberal ideological totalitarianism. On more than one occasion, he carefully and courteously exposes examples of feminist academics projecting their own ideological assumptions and needs on the past. This is a model of honest historical and literary scholarship - 'old school' in the best sense.

Satanic Feminism Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-century Culture

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