Reading Androgynous Leadership in Fairy Tales

Introduction

The Dalai Lama, a distinguished world leader, said that “as long as there is a lack of the inner discipline that brings calmness of mind, no matter what external facilities or conditions you have, they will never give you the feeling of joy and happiness that you are seeking” (Lama & Cutler, 1998, p. 26). This saying reminds me of an important aspect of leadership that has often been neglected in external power-centered societies: Leadership is firstly about ‘leading’ the leaders themselves before they attempt to lead anyone else, and ‘leading themselves’ means that they aim to achieve inner peace and integrity prior to their developing other external abilities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of androgynous leadership depicted in some well-known western fairy tales and in a modern cultural product derived from fairy tales, Shrek. I would argue that androgynous leadership is similar to the leadership that the Dalai Lama emphasizes; a leadership that involves internal harmony and integrity, and that fairy tales can be viewed as the ‘old wise teachers’ who reveal what qualities comprise such leadership. As the title indicates, ‘androgyny’, ‘leadership’ and ‘fairy tales’ are the three key words for this paper. All three concepts appear often, over a long period of time, in the records of western history and have gained particular attention in the contemporary period as well. The concept of androgyny originated in Plato’s Symposium, being found in myths, arts and literature throughout history, and since “social scientists rediscovered the concept” of androgyny (Hargreaves, 2005, p. 97) in the 1970s, has been raised as an alternative concept, challenging the debates and theories that focus on gender division. The matter of leadership has been one of the most important issues in human history, and has also gained particular popularity and interest in recent decades, in a world that currently faces numerous ongoing local conflicts despite having witnessed two devastatingly destructive world wars.

‘Fairy tales’ are one of the oldest forms of tales and are among the most familiar stories in human history, having been handed down from generation to generation among peasants before they were eventually collected, modified and published as written tales in the period of industrialization and modernization in Europe. Being traditionally considered as “domestic arts” and “old wives” stories (Tatar, 1999, p. x), fairy tales had rarely been the object of serious study until they started to gain serious academic attention in the late 20th century.

Not only do these three key words - androgyny, leadership and fairy tales - share the common feature that they all have a long history of being used as tools to understand the essence of human beings, but also they are all related to an individual person’s relationship with her/his own inner world as well as to the person’s social relationships. More explicitly, androgyny can refer to the balanced relationship between the man and the woman as well as pointing to the inner balance between ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ qualities within a person. Leadership commonly implies the relationship between a leader (leaders) and followers, but it often means the inner discipline, especially in oriental cultures. Fairy tales may express the relationship between people and the social context in which they live, but also they can be read as symbolic expressions of the human psyche. Social, political and cultural context is related to people’s psychological state in complex ways; however, I argue that androgyny needs to be discussed more in relation to human beings’ internal qualities, and intend to analyze fairy tales by focusing on how they can be seen as symbolic and conceptual tools to express a human being’s androgynous state, i.e. the integrated state of a person’s psyche. To sum up, all three concepts can be discussed in relation to a person’s (or people’s) relationship with both the inner world and the external world. This paper focuses on the link between the two concepts of androgyny and leadership, in relation to a person’s self-understanding, while discussing how fairy tales emphasize the importance of androgyny in achieving a person’s (and a community’s) ultimate well-being. In order to do this, the following sections deal with the concept of androgyny and ideas of leadership, in more depth. Following this discussion, this paper will go on to argue how these concepts are expressed in fairy tales and why androgynous leadership is important for contemporary societies.

Androgyny as the Integration of Any Opposing Qualities

Androgyny is a term, which is considered to be originally derived from two Greek words, andr (meaning man) and gyne (meaning woman), referring to “the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics” (Oxford University Dictionary). However, the discourses and definitions of androgyny are diverse and often contrasting. Androgyny has sometimes been used as “a synonym for bisexuality” (Stimpson, 1988, p. 54), yet, at other times, as meaning “not bisexuality” (Singer, 1976, p. 11). Grace Tiffany (1985) suggests that androgyny is “energy between individuals, rather than a psyche state locked within” (p. 13), while Tracy Hargreaves (2005) introduces the idea that it is “psychic equilibrium and wholeness” (p. 100). Not only the term ‘androgyny’ but also the understandings of androgyny comprise opposite ideas. Although there are various interpretations of androgyny and the term is often used to refer to an ambiguous sexual identity or gender-blurred contemporary cultural trends such as fashion and make-up, for the purposes of this study androgyny will mainly refer to an inner state of being mentally between woman and man. That is, while androgyny entails exterior trends and appearance, it is essentially related to a person’s inner state. Virginia Woolf, a distinguished British modernist writer, is known for employing the concept of androgyny in arguing her vision of the relationship between men and women, and also for the future of female writers. Woolf starts by discussing the cooperation between men and women but her final point is that an individual writer should be androgynous by integrating both femininity and masculinity into their works to exercise creative energy. While thinking about ‘androgyny’ as an essential quality for a great writer, she describes a vision of the cooperation between the two sexes in a scene where “a girl in patent leather boots” and “a young man in a maroon coat” (Woolf, 1987, p. 92) from different directions get into a cab and “the cab glided off”: “For certainly when I saw the couple get into the taxi-cab the mind felt as if, after being divided, it had become together again in a natural fusion. The obvious reason would be that it is natural for the sexes to co-operate” (Woolf, 1987, p. 93).

Then, Woolf moves to emphasize the cooperation between ‘two sexes’ within a person’s (a writer’s) mind rather than that between a man and a woman. She does not underestimate the significance and necessity of the cooperation between men and women; however what really needs to be achieved in order to exercise creative energy is the inner cooperation between opposite (different) aspects within a person (a writer). She gives two examples of androgynous writers - Samuel Coleridge and William Shakespeare - who could write some of the most creative English literary works by tapping in on both sexes within themselves, arguing that their mind is “man-womanly” and conversely “woman-manly” (p. 94). Woolf mentions that Coleridge himself considered that “a great mind is androgynous”, which refers to the qualities of being “resonant and porous”, and “naturally creative, incandescent and undivided” (p. 94). Shakespeare is considered as androgynous because he was not conscious of his own sex and consequently, his creativity was not restricted by the limitation of one sex. His writing contrasts with that of many male writers in the 19th century, such as Mr. A, mentioned by Woolf, who were occupied with their own sex and were asserting their superiority in their books. What Woolf emphasizes by mentioning the two androgynous writers is that an androgynous writer is capable of responding to the other sex within their mind, to ‘open up’ to the other sex, and to communicate with it, and by doing that, to produce something new and creative. She also repeatedly uses ‘marriage’ as a metaphor of the collaboration between, and the combination of, the two ‘opposite’ characteristics (including genders), saying that “some marriage of opposites has to be consummated” (p. 99), a theme that often appears in a similar way in fairy tales.

Given that the achievement of androgynous quality is so important for being a great writer, why do so many writers fail to be androgynous? As an answer to this self-imposing question, Woolf demonstrates that the failure stems from all kinds of prejudices that are internalized in people’s mind in judging ‘superiority’ and ‘inferiority’, and from socially established hierarchical structures. Woolf argues that a person’s talent and value cannot be measured by exterior standards or social authority, and she intends not to follow the traditional rules and orders set up by the hierarchical male-centred society. “Even if the time had come, I do not believe that gifts, whether of mind or character, can be weighed like sugar or butter, not even in Cambridge, where they are so adept at putting people into classes and fixing caps on their heads and letters after their names” (p. 100). A distinctive sign of true maturity is to “cease to believe in sides or in Headmasters or in highly ornamental pots” (p. 101). “Headmasters” are an example of authoritative people in society, and the “highly ornamental pots” are a symbol of the social rewards given to those who comply with the social rules and orders. When people are immature, they tend to focus on one side, but to neglect the other side by being occupied with the opposing concepts of superiority and inferiority, and to strive to belong to the ‘superiority’ group and to oppress the other group. More importantly, they separate their various inner desires and qualities into the ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’, and subjugate the ‘inferior’ qualities and any of their particular desires that are not accepted by social authority, while they are controlled by the other desires. By doing that, Woolf argues that they lose their integrated identity and their ability to communicate with various aspects of themselves. To Woolf, the main reason why writers’ creativity and androgynous qualities are blocked involves socially established prejudices, and all kinds of divisions and boundaries based on those biased concepts. Prejudices make it impossible for a person to live as what he/she truly is, and for people to see things as they really are. In particular, the various prejudiced social concepts and structures regarding gender prevent a person (a writer) from being ‘man-womanly’ and ‘woman-manly’, and it is mainly the femininity that needs to be developed and exercised in order to avoid blocking the natural flow of a writer’s creative energy and making any writing limited or biased.

Woolf’s idea of the marriage between the opposites shows an interesting correspondence to the oriental concept of androgyny expressed in the idea of eum and yang in Korean, or yin and yang in Chinese. Although the terms are often used to describe the philosophy of oriental martial arts, more broadly they refer to the way of life and a world working in balance. The Korean national flag, called taekeuk, symbolizes this philosophy in that the outer circle of the eum/yang represents the wholeness, while the red and blue shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two opposite energies. Eum, signified by the blue shape, represents “female, darkness, soft, inactivity, etc”, while yang, signified by the red one, represents “male, light, hard, activity, etc” (Na, 2009, p. 2). The structure of the eum and yang expresses the recurring movement of these two energies, which causes everything in life to happen. This philosophy teaches that no force can exist without its opposing nature, and argues that we can only channel all our energies into positive and life giving activities by understanding our complete nature. In this way, the opposing qualities are actually complementary to each other, just as “yin and yang are not antagonistic. They are relational as in the case of “this and that”. This and that are by nature inter-relational” (Na, 2009, p. 5). That is, the philosophy of eum and yang is the philosophy of balance, harmony and interaction between opposing (yet complementary) forces and energies, and this idea not only applies to the way that the world is, but also to the inner state of an individual. Traditionally, the concept of eum and yang was a philosophy that leaders were required to understand and put into practice. Oriental martial arts, which are the main practical outworkings of the philosophy of eum and yang, are essentially self-discipline activities used to achieve leadership. In other words, it is very important for a leader to understand how the opposite qualities (forces and energies) work together and how to make a balance between these qualities, in order to become a good leader, which basically includes inner discipline and self-understanding. This is also what androgynous leadership means, in both the concept of androgyny and the philosophy of eum and yang, the man and the woman symbolize two opposing qualities.

The more theoretical approaches to androgyny were taken by 20^th century psychoanalysts and psychologists. Sandra Bem, who is considered to be one of the leading psychologists working on androgyny, classifies individuals as having one of four gender-role orientations: “masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated” (Bem, 1993, p. 120) and discusses the positive characteristics of androgynous people. According to Bem, the androgynous person is a female or male who is “high in both masculinity and femininity”, while the undifferentiated person is “low in both masculinity and femininity” (p. 120). Moreover, androgynous men and women are more flexible and more mentally healthy than either a masculine or feminine individual. Carl Jung is the psychoanalyst who had the greatest influence on all these works of research, and he used the concept of androgyny to explain human beings’ integrated psyche. Jung similarly understands androgyny as a person’s inner integrity, where each man and woman needs to understand himself/ herself as a whole (this is one meaning of ‘integrity’). However, the distinctive aspects in his theory of androgyny were the “spiritualization of the mind” (Pietikainen, 2007, p. 103) and his emphasis on the integrity of the conscious and the unconscious within a person. Jung suggests that the opposite inner quality for a woman is called ‘the Animus’, and for a man is called ‘the Anima’. The animus represents “inner masculine figure in a woman”, while the anima represents “the inner feminine figure in a man” (von Franz & Sharp, 2002, p. 11). The anima and animus are often hidden in a man’s and a woman’s unconscious, respectively, and can be suppressed by social rules and persona, so that it is important for one to understand one’s own unconscious area in order to understand oneself wholly and to activate both the animus and the anima. To sum up, an androgynous person means a person who is aware of both masculine and feminine qualities (areas) and has achieved a balance in them (or is in the process of balancing both qualities). Jung’s idea that androgyny has much to do with a person’s unconscious as well as conscious can be explored in fairy tales, which can also be considered to touch both a person’s conscious and unconscious level.

Leadership as the Discipline of Self-understanding

In recent decades, ‘female leadership’ or ‘feminine leadership’ has become of great interest as an alternative to masculine leadership, because aggressive, ‘power and conquest-centred’ masculine leadership has often resulted in massive destruction and violence. Lipman-Bluemen characterizes the conventional American concept of leadership as “competitive, combative, controlling, aggressive, and self-reliant”, which is “better suited to a frontier society than to the interdependent global and organizational environments that will characterize the twentieth-first century” (p. 184). Mitchell (2005) observes that “In the twentieth-first century, women will change the nature of power rather than power changing the nature of women” (p. 485), and Komives demonstrates that “women’s views of leadership and the importance of relationships in organizational life influenced this paradigm shift” (p. 45). However, feminine leadership does not necessarily mean the leadership that is exercised by female leaders but emphasizes traditional femininity as an important source for leadership qualities. Conversely, ‘masculine leadership’ does not simply mean leadership that is exercised by males but indicates a leadership whose effectiveness is mainly dependent on traditional masculinity. In other words, ‘feminine leadership’ or ‘masculine leadership’ indicates what kind of inner qualities the leadership entails, not who (whether women or men) are leaders. Traditionally, “the masculine individual is popularly seen as a maker”, while “the feminine as a nourisher” (Heilbrun, xiv), and masculine characteristics include “competitiveness, aggressiveness, and defensiveness”, while feminine characteristics include “gentleness, lovingness, and the counting of cost in human rather than national or property terms” (Heilbrun, xvi). Bem (1993) argues that “masculine and femininity are cultural constructions that should be abolished” (p. 175), and these two terms (‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’) can be controversial, in that they may maintain and strengthen disputed gender-divided qualities. Also, the concept of androgyny can be problematic, in that it “treated masculinity and femininity as if they had an independent and palpable reality” (Bem, 1993, p. 175). Nevertheless, these two terms are useful for discussing the different, sometimes conflicting and opposite, qualities that coexist inside a human being, and the term ‘androgyny’ is also useful to describe a person’s integrated state of inner mind. In this paper, these two terms and their relevant characteristics are used to refer to any conflicting but complementary energies and qualities used when discussing a person’s self-understanding and integrity.

Interestingly, this concept is found in one of the oldest and the most well-known instructions about the development of leadership in oriental culture, presented in a Chinese saying ‘cultivate yourself first, then govern your family wisely, and finally restore peace in the whole country’.¹ This saying emphasizes the various stages of leadership from training oneself to ruling a country. Given that there were, historically, ongoing conflicts and battles among the various districts within China, it is understandable that this maxim defined great leadership as an ability to end the battles and to bring peace to the ‘whole’ country. Still, it is interesting that leadership is here associated with peace-making ability, although practically, that peace could mean benefit for the person in power. This ‘peace-making ability’ as an ideal leadership skill is developed from an ability to govern one’s family wisely, i.e. relationships of blood and kinship, and more basically, through self-training. Self-training particularly underlines a potential leader’s moral integrity and his learning to govern not only his own desires but also the desires of his family, before ruling a country. The focus on self-discipline and self-integrity in this traditional leadership philosophy is similar to the leadership that the Dalai Lama emphasizes.

Both the Chinese Confucian teaching on leadership and the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist teaching value a person’s self-leadership as beneficial in helping a person achieve self-integrity and internal peace. These concepts of leadership mean leadership involving communication and cooperation in the many diverse aspects of life, not a form of leadership based on domineering control of others or the environment. This is in line with the idea of androgyny, which is expressed both in the philosophy of eum and yang and with the integrity of the anima and the animus, in that all of these philosophical concepts coherently emphasize the importance of self-understanding and the cooperation between diverse (or opposite) factors of life.

Fairy tales are a great form for conveying the importance of self-understanding and of integrity in one’s internal world. Since the second half of the 20^th century, there has been significant academic attention paid to fairy tales after a long period of neglecting research on fairy tales. Not being “unique one-offs” (Carter, 1990, p. x), fairy tales are often considered to have particular cultural, social and political implications, and “local colour often affects the premises of a tale” (Tatar, 1999, p. ix). On the other hand, they are also interpreted as symbolic archetypes of the human psyche rather than of specific cultural aspects as Franz argues that “fairy tales are the purest and simplest expression of collective unconscious psychic processes” (von Franz, 1996, p. 1). Both arguments are considered as having their own grounds, but this paper is more focused on the second concept. It is because this second perspective focuses more on how fairy tales function in revealing people’s inner states of being, which this paper aims to discuss through the concept of androgyny. As Tatar argues, fairy tales are excellent resources for reflecting the social context from which they originated; however, they show common structures and motifs that can also be read in relation to people’s minds. They seem to offer recurrent frames to signify the difficult situations in which the fairy tale’s characters begin their initiation (taking adventures) and reconciliation (happy ending). The main characters’ adventures are often a means of achieving self-understanding and integrity, which then help them to achieve a higher level of androgyny. This paper specifically examines ‘The Goose Girl’, and ‘Brother and Sister’, two well-known fairy tales from the Grimm Brothers’ collection, and the film Shrek as one of the best-known modern cultural products based on traditional fairy tales. Franz emphasizes the importance of looking at the earliest and simplest versions of a fairy tale in order to explore the symbolic references to the human psyche because “in primitive tales there is an element present that has been lost in most of the later versions” (von Franz & Sharp, 2002, p. 11). Although the concept of an ‘original’ version is controversial, her point makes sense in that ‘earlier versions’ of fairy tales are often simpler and contain more symbolic meanings than the later versions that were collected and modified by specific fairy tale writers such as Perrault and Brothers Grimm in order to implement particular moral lessons and cultural preferences into the stories. Among the stories from the Grimm’s collection, ‘The Goose Girl’ and ‘Brother and Sister’ belong to the stories that have a simpler structure and richer symbolic meanings. The film Shrek is not near to the ‘earliest’ version of fairy tales but is a contemporary work that attempts to reinterpret fairy tales by modifying several factors. By looking at both the two earlier versions of fairy tales and Shrek as a modern reproduction of traditional fairy tales, this paper aims to argue that androgyny is not necessarily limited to the ‘oldest and simplest’ versions of fairy tales, but can be vividly presented in contemporary cultural products. Also, Shrek is an ‘androgynous fairy tale film’, being distinct from other fairy tale-related film products that are often based on one specific story. It combines several fairy tales into one story, juxtaposes the diverse issues that fairy tales can raise, and attempts to interpret the essence of fairy tales. Most of all, this ‘androgynous’ film contains various ideas of androgyny. Whether old or modern, written stories or a visual product, the examination of both texts is expected to illuminate how androgyny is commonly considered to be important for the ultimate well-being of human beings and essential for leadership.

‘The Goose Girl’: From ‘Negative Femininity’ to ‘Positive Femininity’

‘The Goose Girl’ features a girl who undergoes turbulent changes as her status goes from being a princess to a simple goose girl and then is restored in the end. When the princess leaves her mother, the queen, in order to get married to a prince, the queen gives her “everything that suited a royal dowry” (Zipes, p. 322), as well as a talking horse, Falada, and a chambermaid to accompany and protect her daughter. The queen also gives her a handkerchief with three drops of her own blood, which is the ultimate protection from any evil and danger. However, the chambermaid is not faithful at all but is cruel and ambitious, seeking a chance to take over the princess’s position. While trying to drink water from the brook, the princess drops her handkerchief and is then robbed of every possession that she has, and even loses her royal status. The chambermaid, who disguises herself as the princess, plans to get married to the prince and relegates the real princess to the role of goose girl, even killing the princess’ talking horse, Falada, to conceal the truth. Facing her miserable situation, the princess asks the knacker to carry Falada’s head and to hang it on the wall under the gate, so that she can still talk to the horse whenever she passes the gate. Despite the hardships she experiences as a goose girl, she keeps her own promise not to reveal the truth about the fake bride and to protect her hair from the goose boy, Conrad. Eventually, the king discovers the goose girl’s true identity, and the chambermaid is sentenced to death.

This fairy tale, like most fairy tales, has a plot where the main character lacks something, and goes through tough trials before achieving a happy ending. At the beginning of this story, the princess and the chambermaid show ‘negative femininity’ and ‘negative masculinity’ respectively. When explaining the concept of psychological androgyny, Cook (1985) introduces the idea of “the blending of positive masculine and feminine characteristics within a given person” (p. 2), and I am using the term, ‘negative’, for feminine or masculine characteristics that function in destructive ways, while using ‘positive’ to describe characteristics that can contribute to the ultimate welfare of a person or a group. When one quality is extreme, either masculinity or femininity, it operates negatively (destructively). However, as one develops positive masculinity, positive femininity develops correspondingly, and vice versa. In this story, the chambermaid represents ‘negative’ masculinity, meaning that her Animus functions in destructive ways. She is completely preoccupied by her desire for power, and with the high status and other privileges that she could gain from being queen. She uses violence, force, threats, deception, and in the end, murder, in order to satisfy her ‘superficial’ desires. The maid is physically stronger than the princess, and the methods she uses reflect the various means that have been used to gain and maintain power, throughout patriarchal history. In a Greek Myth, Cronus stole authority from his father, Uranus, by castrating him; and Zeus waged a war against his father, Cronus, and took the power from him. These are vivid examples of how masculinity may be exercised in destructive ways. In contrast, the princess is described as ‘too gentle’ and weak, not only emotionally but also physically. She is completely helpless to exercise her right as a princess and fails to protect herself from her servant. What she does, in response to her servant’s disloyal attitude is just to weep and to miss her mother, and she is portrayed as a girl who has not developed the masculine strength to cope with danger at all. The fact that her father is missing symbolizes the absence of masculinity in her life and her unbalanced femininity leads her to the loss of her identity as well as all her possessions and position.

In contrast, the chambermaid uses all kinds of destructive force to satisfy her desires but those desires turns out to be ‘superficial’ ones. In the end, the old king finds out about her deception and wickedness, and asks her what kind of punishment a woman deserves for such evil behaviour. Without realizing that the king actually is talking about her, the maid recommends a very harsh and cruel sentence: “she deserves nothing better,” said the false bride, “than to be stripped completely naked and put inside a barrel studded with sharp nails. Then two white horses should be harnessed to the barrel and made to drag her through the streets until she’s dead” (p. 327). First of all, this self-sentence demonstrates how distant she is from her inner voice (or inner self); in other words, how ignorant she is of herself. She does not realize that the king’s story actually refers to her. She is completely consumed by her superficial desires and her newly upgraded external status - now that she is a princess, a future queen, living in a palace and enjoying all the privileges in the castle. These outward conditions make her forget (or she chooses to forget) what she has done and who she is. The maid’s inner blindness and occupation with exterior conditions can be also seen in her response to the princess. The maid does not recognize the princess because of the “dazzling dress” the princess is wearing (p. 326). The chambermaid presumably thinks that there is no way that the princess could be wearing such a dress because she is now a dirty goose girl. Still, because her mind is focused on appearances, the chambermaid is unable to see not only her own true identity but also the princess’ true identity. Nevertheless, at the unconscious level, she is aware that what she has done is a terrible crime, demonstrating the gulf between her conscious image of herself and her unconscious image of herself. That is, there is a gap in her own knowledge of herself. After becoming a potential bride, she does everything to remove whatever reminds her of her former identity and of the ‘dark’ side of herself. She asks the prince to kill Falada, so that any unwelcome truths about her identity can be hidden. However, she cannot silence her unconscious. She knows in her heart that what she has done is very wrong and deserves the cruel punishment, and her unconscious reveals the truth, which she tries so hard to suppress. Jung says that “everything that works from the unconscious appears projected on others” (p. 62), emphasizing that when people suppress their shadows (the ‘dark’ side of themselves), not seeing the shadow nor dealing with it appropriately, there is a danger that they become preoccupied by their own superficial desires, and that their unconscious may function in a destructive way, often projecting this evil onto others, rather than letting them see evil in themselves. In the case of the chambermaid, she projects her wickedness on to ‘another evil woman’ and the projection ultimately brings about her own death without her realizing it. Her obsessive desire for power is her initial shadow and she fails to deal with that desire. She was born a housemaid but presumably had the desire to be a princess, experiencing frustration in a hierarchical class system. Still, she seems to fail to look at this frustration and desire openly, and was unable to deal with it in constructive ways. By usurping the princess’s position, lying to the king, and killing the horse, her shadow deepens and darkens but she still refuses to look at the real nature of her actions. This eventually leads her to death, which demonstrates that she is seriously lacking in androgynous quality, i.e. the balance between opposite aspects of herself and the ability to contact her unconscious. To sum up, the maid symbolizes a figure who is only preoccupied by her conscious desires and superficial goals, and who uses destructive methods to achieve those goals by suppressing the truth hidden in her unconscious. What the maid has done to her mistress, the princess, is indeed wicked. Still, if the maid were able to communicate with her ‘real’ identity, then she would have been able to notice to whom the king was referring. Ironically, her ‘dark’ ending results from the fact that she has disregarded her ‘dark’ side.

In contrast to the chambermaid, the princess is apparently too weak, fragile, and helpless to protect herself but maintains her inner integrity whatever the circumstances are. Initially, the princess shows mainly ‘negative’ feminine characteristics. She is too obedient and weak to look after herself, and submits to her servant’s unjust coercion. Her complete helplessness does not simply involve her own misfortune. The people, the items and the horse that she is responsible for, are also abused and mistreated. Her femininity functions in a negative way when it is not balanced out by strength. After she is forced to lose everything ‘superficial’ and to become a goose girl, the princess manages to develop her ‘positive masculine quality’ and is thus able to protect herself from the goose boy’s forceful demands for her golden hair without losing her gentle feminine characteristics. She does not use any violence or aggressive methods to ward off the goose boy, but instead asks for the help of nature (the wind) and the wind grants her wish. The Dalai Lama teaches “positive states of mind can act as direct antidotes to negative states of mind” (Lama & Cutler, 1998, p. 243) and as the goose girl develops positive masculinity, it becomes ‘an antidote’ to her negative femininity, and her negative femininity changes into positive femininity. It can be argued that she would still be a helpless girl without the assistance of the wind. However, the close relationship with nature contributes to strength for women, and the princess can also be said to become mature through her interaction with nature. While destructive patriarchal history has long considered nature as an object to exploit and conquer, the matriarchal tradition has respected nature and sought for peaceful coexistence between human beings and nature by appreciating the benefits of nature. While the princess does not lose her feminine quality and also keeps her promise, to some extent, she learns to develop the ‘positive’ masculine characteristics of courage and wit, in order to resist the boy’s unwanted advances. It can be argued that she is still too passive to overcome the wicked maid and to describe her situation or reveal her identity more clearly. However, this story seems to be focused on the princess’s protecting her integrity by being faithful to her promise, no matter what happens. Her behaviour can be considered rather passive, but given that the main motif of this story is a person’s true or false identity, it is very important for the princess to be true to her own words. She finds it more important to keep her promise than to regain her external status, which contrasts with the mindset of the chambermaid who is obsessed with her external status and even betrays her true identity. This story emphasizes that when our external circumstances change dramatically, it is ultimately useless to seek external power and wealth at the expense of the internal integrity and the most important course of action is to protect our inner integrity.

‘Brother and Sister’: Cooperation among Different Desires

It seems that the story of ‘Brother and Sister’ shows the different desires at work in a human being’s mind, and Freud’s theory of the id, the ego and the super-ego is particularly useful in understanding this story. Freud (1989) explains that “the ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions” (p. 19). The ego attempts to “substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle which reigns unrestrictedly in the id” (p. 19). After their mother’s death, a brother and his little sister suffer from their stepmother’s harsh treatment. The brother laments that “the dog under the table is better off” (Zipes, p. 41) than them and decides to go on adventures with his sister in the wider world. The brother prefers to take risks rather than stay in a safe area, and he is driven by his instinctual desires, symbolizing the function of the id, while the sister is concerned about their safety and strives to control her brother’s ‘dangerous’ desires, representing the function of the ego. When they wander in the forest and become thirsty, the brother is tempted to drink from the spring twice, which has been enchanted by their wicked stepmother. The sister is able to listen to the warnings from the spring that if the brother drinks the water, he will turn into a tiger or a wolf, and kill his sister. When they meet the third spring, the sister also hears the warning that “whoever drinks of me will be turned into a deer” (p. 42). However, the brother cannot resist drinking the water and turns into a deer. The sister shows her ability to interact with nature and helps her brother to control his desires for their well-being, while the brother is simply controlled by his instinctual nature. The sister’s advice on the previous two occasions still prevents their lives from being completely destroyed because the brother being a deer is much better than his being a tiger or a wolf. As a tiger or a wolf, the brother will “tear the sister to pieces” or “eat her up” (p. 42), meaning that the sister would die and the brother would not have any controller, the ego, and that he would live mainly by his instinctual desires and could endanger his own life, too. The sister encourages her brother to be patient and to wait until the third time, and the brother manages to follow her advice, so that they can be still together.

Even after becoming a deer, the brother, representing the id, always responds to his instinctual desires. The sister wants them to live in a deep forest so that they can be safe where no-one can find them. However, the sister cannot completely ignore her brother’s desires because she understands well that her brother needs to run freely outside, and if she ignores this part of his instinct, he might be physically safe but emotionally dead. There is a tension between the two conditions, ‘safe but not happy’ and ‘taking risks but happy’, implying the tension between ‘the reality principle’ and ‘the pleasure principle’. The sister gives her brother careful advice but she allows him to express his desires. Also, she does not scold or criticize her brother for endangering their safety, demonstrating that she is an androgynous person. That is, she does not ignore the potentially ‘dangerous desire’ she has (as seen in her brother), nor simply suppress the desire and lock him in the house. She knows the importance of safety but tries to achieve the best outcome for their well-being by facing the dangerous desire and dealing with it. Any risky adventure must also have dual aspects; it can cause difficulty and hardship in our lives but may also bring fresh luck, just as the brother’s desire to go outside brings the king to their house. Before the sister gets married to the king, the brother’s instinctual desire (the id) and the sister’s practical restraint (the ego) work together for their welfare.

After the sister gets married, she undergoes another significant experience that develops her super-ego. Although Freud’s term, the super-ego is mainly associated with “conscience, sense of guilt, need for punishment, and remorse”, which derives from a (male) child’s relationship with his father, at the same time it involves “everything that is expected of the higher nature of man” (p. 33). Freud’s interpretation of the super- ego has been criticized as being a male-oriented concept that has little to do with women. In this paper, the super-ego refers to the development of higher moral responsibility and is an extension of the ego (the function of reason). Initially, the sister is not a weak person, like the princess starts out in ‘The Goose Girl’, but she becomes weak and risks dying because she gives a birth to a baby. Being physically vulnerable, she is “killed” by her stepmother but this risk is somehow a significant chance for her to exercise another level of her potential; she overcomes her death for the sake of her baby and her brother, although her recovery is temporary and limited. One may interpret the situation to be the consequence of her sense of guilt about her not looking after her baby and brother, but in fact it is more an indicator of the androgynous aspects in her life. She risks her own life when she gives birth to her baby, and overcomes her death because she is so concerned about the well-being of her baby and her brother, representing clearly androgynous aspects - that life involves death and death involves life. It can be argued that this story still presents the sister as a passive female character who eventually meets a king and becomes a queen, as well as presenting a typical fairy tale plot, as seen in the conflict between the women characters (the wicked stepmother and the sister). However, this story can be interpreted to be symbolizing the cooperation between the different desires operating within a person, through the sister’s adventures with her brother. While learning to deal with her brother, i.e. her id, she allows her ego to negotiate with her id and develops the super- ego through her roles as a mother and a sister. Unlike other fairy tales, which typically end with the happy marriage of the prince and princess, this story emphasizes the happy ending for a brother and sister; “From then on sister and brother lived happily until the end of their days” (p. 46). This story is not primarily about a girl’s upgrading her external status by marrying a king but about the conflict or harmony between the different desires within a person. That is, the story is a vivid portrayal of a female character undergoing an inner struggle to face and to handle the different desires within her and to achieve her inner growth, which ultimately brings about a balance between her conflicting desires that leads to her happiness.

Shrek : A Modern Cultural Icon of Androgynous Leadership

Shrek, a hugely popular animated fantasy comedy that was produced by DreamWorks in 2001, is full of symbols and images of androgyny. First, this film is a skilful combination of the concept of ‘new’ fairy tale and ‘old’ fairy tale. In starting with Shrek’s tearing a page from a fairy tale book, this film implies that it is going to ‘tear up’ the theme of typical fairy tales and to present a different story. However, classic fairy tale structure and images can still be found in this film. It does away with typical gender characters; there is no brave, handsome and romantic ‘perfect’ prince character but instead a greedy coward Lord Farquaard, and a brave but ‘ugly’ and isolated male character, Shrek. The princess, Fiona, is typical in that she was enchanted by a wicked spell and has been waiting for the moment when ‘true love’s kiss’ wakes her up. However, she is also active, strong and self-protective. The most apparent subversion in gender roles is seen in the cases of a male donkey and a female dragon. The donkey is chatty, spontaneous, emotional, fainthearted, and physically small and weak, which are the opposite of typical masculine qualities. On the other hand, the dragon is portrayed as a female who is enormous and powerful. However, these subversive elements are also mixed with the presentation of more typical gender roles. Although both the donkey and the dragon are emotionally lonely and isolated, the dragon is portrayed as more vulnerable to ‘the possibility of love’ and she abandons her duty to keep the princess, Fiona, after falling in love with the donkey. The donkey is not distracted because of love and is consistent in achieving his goal. The two male characters’ mission to rescue Fiona can be achieved because of the female dragon’s vulnerability to love and the dragon consistently helps the donkey throughout the film. Also, the dragon’s femininity is presented in a typical way; she wears the pink lipstick and has long black eyelashes. In this way, Shrek reproduces traditional gender stereotypes while at the same time reversing typical gender roles, showing its limitation in ‘tearing up’ traditional fairy tale characteristics.

Nevertheless, when looking at Shrek as a whole, I would argue that this mixture between the confirmation and distortion of traditional gender roles is a part of its androgynous structures that pass throughout the whole film. The film features two contrasting settings; Shrek’s swamp is portrayed as green and quite primitive, while Lord Farquaard’s extremely organized city is all made of paved roads and identical buildings. While these two male characters are in conflicting situations and their residences are in stark contrast, Shrek’s life is also the combination of a nature-friendly primitive lifestyle, and a modern and civilized one. Shrek eats worms, and swims in a thick swamp, but he uses a fork and knife when he eats food at the table, and sleeps on a decent bed. This contrast between ‘opposite’ aspects is universally found in all characters. As mentioned above, the dragon is physically powerful but emotionally vulnerable. The donkey is physically vulnerable but is emotionally able to cope with his loneliness. Fiona has a fixed traditional mindset about romantic love and the role of a prince as a saviour but is physically strong and able to protect herself. Shrek is apparently ‘ugly’ and threatening, but his heart is soft and kind. Lord Farquaard’s short height is emphasized in the film, which contrasts with his ‘high’ ambition and the tall skyscraper in which he lives. That is, the whole plot is full of a mixture of contrasting qualities and the interactions between those diverse aspects.

This ‘androgynous’ plot - a plot that shows the interaction between contrasting qualities within a character and the whole story - affects not only the external events but also each character’s inner matter. In fact, the external settings are designed in order for the characters to face their inner conflicts and finally to achieve internal integrity. All of the main characters in this story have shadows inside their minds and they struggle with the split between their true identities (or qualities) and their external states (or appearances). Shrek’s seemingly self-contented life at the beginning of the story results from his deep loneliness, his isolation and his self-defence mechanism, and when complaining about people’s fixed concept of him as an ugly and scary ogre, Shrek defines himself as an “onion”. He emphasizes that he is not a one-dimensional ogre, but consists of multiple layers like an onion and the whole series of unwanted adventures leads him to escape from his safe boundary and to reflect on his character by interacting with diverse fairy creatures and having the courage to fall in love with a princess at the risk of being hurt. Fiona might be the person who struggles most with the big difference between her contrasting appearances in the daytime and at night. She is not only ‘the most beautiful’ princess but also confident and strong during the day time. However, after sunset, she turns into an ‘ugly’ ogress, the character whom she cannot reveal but has to suppress. At night, she loses all her confidence and hides herself in darkness. Without loving him at all, Fiona tries to get married to Lord Farquaard in the belief that he can free her from the spell. When she realizes Farquaard’s love is fake and that Shrek is her one true love, she expects her appearance to be transformed into ‘a beautiful princess’ but this film contains one last twist. Shrek’s loving kiss does not change her appearance at all, and Fiona realizes her ‘true’ identity, which she has been aspiring to restore for a long time, is simply her present nature, an ogress princess, and the real problem is her fixed belief and mindset about what ‘beauty’ is and what it means to be like a princess. Shrek shows a similar shadow concerning his appearance; when he listens to Fiona saying, “A princess and ‘ugliness’ cannot go together”, he instantly interprets that ‘ugliness’ refers to his appearance rather than to Fiona’s ogress persona. The conflict and misunderstanding that both characters experience between them are essentially from their distorted self-images. Despite several unexpected twists in the plot, this story ends with a typical fairy tale ending, i.e. a happy marriage between lovers, although not actually - in this case - between a royal couple. However, what is consistently underlined in this story is the process of each character’s facing his/her inner conflicts, revealing his/her shadows in the sunlight, and achieving inner peace and integrity. The happy marriage (ending) in this film, just as seen in the other two fairy tales, is the result of the main characters achieving inner peace and integrity.

While the dragon, initially a threatening character, faces her loneliness, meets her love, the donkey, and finally enjoys her own happy ending, Lord Farquaard remains a wicked person and is eaten by the dragon. Like the chambermaid in ‘The Goose Girl’, he is not able to see (or refuses to see) his inner shadow and seeks to compensate for the shadow by achieving external power, i.e. being a king. His unconscious anxiety about his ‘imperfection’ is constantly contrasted with his obsession with ‘perfection’. The word that he uses most frequently is “perfect” and he tries to fill his life with everything ‘perfect’. His immaculately clean city contrasts with his ‘dirty’ intention regarding Fiona and the kingship. All the buildings are identical, without any diversity, and his quest to remove all the ‘fairy tale creatures’ from his land symbolizes his suppression of imagination. All his human subjects are also presented as identical in terms of their attitudes. No different or diverse perspectives are allowed to be expressed and every subject responds precisely as they are expected to respond. The tall building that Farquaard has constructed is the most vivid example to show how deep his complex about his shortness is. Shrek himself jokes about Farquaard’s attempt to compensate for his shortness by means of the skyscraper. Like the chambermaid, his death ultimately results from his inner blindness, which is caused by his fixed obsessions with external power and with the suppression of his inner shadow.

Conclusion

In recent years, one of the most requisite qualities for leaders has become the ability to communicate with diverse and wide ranges of groups, and the ability to negotiate in the event of conflicting interests among those groups. The concept of androgyny is useful to show what this quality means, and fairy tales give vivid examples regarding how important it is to develop androgynous characteristics. If a person is androgynous, it means that he/she is aware of tensions between the different, often conflicting and opposite aspects and desires of a human being (or a group, a community, a society, or the world, in wider concept) and is able to achieve a balance among those diverse aspects. The diverse (often apparently conflicting and different) aspects can be expressed as ‘feminine’ and/or ‘masculine’. However, as we have discussed earlier, these aspects include many other concepts that are often considered to be different and opposites: ugliness and beauty, fantasy (dream) and reality, sickness and health, instinct and rationality, cleverness and stupidity, day and night, light and darkness, good and evil, failure and success, white and black, big and small, etc. Some qualities may be preferred, while other qualities may be disliked and therefore, suppressed, depending on the social environment or on personal experience. In order to accept several diverse aspects in an integrated way, a leader needs to be aware of fixed value systems and of hierarchies based on the invalid concepts of superiority and inferiority, as Woolf argues, and a leader also needs to be ‘porous’ and ‘resonant’ to new possibilities as Coleridge suggests. Most of all, the qualities that are not welcomed consciously reside in our unconscious, and an androgynous person is one who is able to be aware of these different qualities within himself/herself, accepts them, and learns to use them for his/her own ultimate well-being.

The ability to understand diverse (sometimes conflicting) desires within oneself is essential if a leader is to communicate with various people and deal with diverse external events and situations. This is also the final goal of all the tough adventures that the goose girl, the sister and the brother, Shrek, Fiona, the dragon and the donkey go through. The goose girl, who initially lacks masculinity, develops positive masculinity to balance out her femininity. The contrast between the goose girl’s efforts to keep her inner integrity and the chambermaid’s disjunction from her inner voice, parallels the contrast in their respective endings. In ‘Brother and Sister’, the brother and the sister illustrate the cooperation between the id and the ego, and in the development of the super-ego. The ending emphasizes the harmonious cooperation between the different desires within a person (as represented by the sister and the brother), rather than the traditional gender-focused denouement: marriage between a prince and a princess. Shrek demonstrates the typical androgynous nature found in the world and emphasizes the importance of resolving one’s inner world through diverse means: plot, characterization, symbols and settings. Interestingly, all the main characters in the three fairy tales demonstrate the importance of developing and exercising femininity in order to be androgynous. The ultimate happiness that the goose girl achieves is due to the fact that she was able to keep her gentle, truthful and non-violent characteristics even while facing competitive and violent masculinity, which was symbolized by her maidservant. The sister and Shrek both show gentle and negotiating characteristics when facing difficult hardships and tasks; they do not rely on violent force in order to solve their problems. All three of these characters, whether they are female or male, are able to communicate with nature. In this way, it is essential to develop positive femininity in order for a society or a person to achieve androgynous qualities and balance.

Although each story has a specific conclusion, all three fairy tales show a similar structure that starts with one or more characters’ lack of androgyny and ends with the achievement of androgyny, demonstrating that harmonizing one’s inner self is not an easily completed task but instead is more of an ongoing process. Some people are more androgynous than others, and keep their androgynous characteristics quite stable. However, even if one person is androgynous, it does not mean that he/she has achieved a final state of androgyny or that he keeps the same level of androgynous balance all the time. Hoeveler (1990) says that androgyny is “simply an idea that has never existed in the realm of fact” (p. 90) and Cook (1985) suggests that “androgyny is seen as a highly desirable, even ideal, state of being” (p. 21). I want to suggest that androgyny is an ongoing process of life wherein various conflicting energies and qualities are interacting with each other. A human being is a living being and is in the process of continuous growth psychologically and spiritually, and this growth cannot be entirely told in one story. This may be why fairy tales repeat the motifs of lack and fulfilment, and of a sad start and a happy ending, in their androgynous structure.

Acknowledgments

* This research was supported by the Sookmyung Women’s University Research Grants 1-1103-0688 in 2011.

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