What the Wolf Wore: Seven Stories (Part 6)

what the wolf wore

Hello friend,

I didn’t grow up close to the story of Ariadne…

daughter of King Minos of the Isle of Crete. In my memory, I had only a sense of the Minotaur, a monstrous creature kept in a subterranean maze, capable of tearing apart any and all who ventured into his dark kingdom.

The story of the monster was hard to shake, since it seemed to represent the inescapability of death - one who managed to kill the Minotaur might still lose his life to the maze, starving before he could find his way out. My childhood relief was contained in a dim awareness that someone, eventually, did manage to dispel this ultimate fear, using a spool of thread to conquer both the monster and the darkness.

A handful of years ago, I came across the myth in its entirety, in an unexpected place. I was reading Sue Monk Kidd’s memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, in which she interprets the slaying of the Minotaur as a journey of creativity. I became slightly obsessed.

I began working on a retelling of Ariadne, a poem in three parts. Craving more layers to the archetype of Ariadne that was forming in my mind, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in search of them.

Sometimes when I descend the stairs, I carry sugar cubes in my
sweating palms and barely escape with blood on my knuckles.

Who was the brave hero who showed that even impossible stories could end with clarity? It was Theseus who volunteers to kill the Minotaur. But the thing is, he can’t do it without Ariadne. It’s she who lends the string and the sword, though not altogether altruistically - she wants him to survive so he can find his way back to her.

There are many versions of the story’s ending. Whether Ariadne’s love for Theseus was unrequited (relatable), or he quickly grew tired of the bride he had acquired (typical), or he simply forgot about her after stopping for a honeymoon on the Isle of Naxos (hilarious)…the part of the story that endures is that Ariadne finds herself alone on a new island, princess of the unfamiliar.

It’s this version of Ariadne I stumbled upon at the Met. I wrote at that time, It wasn’t long before I found her - or maybe I should say ‘him’ because so many paintings of Ariadne seem inseparable from the male gaze, a woman lying half-destroyed, yet ever-ready to be ravaged by the use and abandonment of man. For example, in Asher Brown Durand’s copy of a John Vanderlyn masterpiece:

“Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos” by Asher Brown Durand (1831-35)

It seemed that few paintings of Ariadne showed her power, the aspect of her that excited me when I read about Monk Kidd’s own obsession with this story. I liked thinking of Ariadne as an artist listening closely to the whisper of truth that never abandons her - only she can abandon it, and then find her way back.

That’s how she seems in Evelyn De Morgan’s version, “Ariadne in Naxos,” where even in her melancholy, she appears whole - her clothes are not torn or faded, and instead of lying open on a cloth of red (symbolizing martyrdom), she wears it close to her body, black straps like armor across her chest.

“Ariadne in Naxos” by Evelyn DeMorgan (1877)

As an allegory for the creative practice, the story of Ariadne and the Minotaur represents the necessity of descent into the psychic shadows. As a writer, I’m never entirely sure what exists in the darkness, I’m only fairly certain it could kill me.

Managing to find my way back out again when the hardest part - the heart of the story - has been reached, is a necessary symmetry.

The thread that accompanies me, intact, is the material upon which the story is built. It is quite literally the unraveling of the narrative, and the ability to wind it back up and retell it again.

I couldn’t abide the vulnerability in paintings of Ariadne because her triangulation with Theseus and Dionysus (who shows up at the end of the story to complete the symmetry of Wrong Guy / Right Guy) is not about being destroyed or saved by a man, but about her own search for self. I saw the power of masculine spirit within her, not something imposed from the outside.⁣

Now I knew there was night in the daylight and I knew what waited there, I went willingly, unable to abandon the one
who would not abandon me.

Although there are so many stories woven through the poems in Imagine a Woman, the foundational one for me is “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” I return to it again and again, its themes and elements finding their way into most every other story I wander through. It was in re-reading my favorite version, retold and illustrated by Jackie Morris, that I began to see through the male hero into a male counterpart, a version of the heroine’s own self.

In thinking over all that I’d learned about the earliest human creation myths and spiritual stories, I recalled how sometimes the most powerful version of the Creator doesn’t have a gender, but embodies both the masculine and the feminine, as I believe we all do. In the fairy tale version of this story, the masculine in all women has to be rescued and released, so that we can see the source of our yearning - someone to love us - is a search for something inside ourselves.

I saw this thread unraveling deeper in the origin story of the Minotaur, who was said to be the half-man, half-bull offspring of King Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë, after she was enchanted to fall in love with a beautiful, snow-white bull - a tricky plot of revenge on King Minos by Poseidon and Aphrodite. This made the ‘monster’ Ariadne’s half-brother, another way of symbolizing her shadow self, a mirror she’s unwilling or unable to look into.

Until the morning I grew tall enough to wonder what was beyond the sea, woke thirsty and drank the potion, not knowing I swallowed a father and his liquid ancestry was poison.

Published in New Plains Review in 2022, “Ariadne Slays the Minotaur” is my version of a woman’s story, hidden inside a man’s. Told in three parts to mimic ‘the hero’s journey,’ this structure also reflected the symmetry of each part of Ariadne’s journey…from the isle of her birth, her home, and her father’s house…to the open sea…and finally to an isle that is something of a blank slate, a place for her to write her own story.

The concealment of this understanding of Ariadne’s psyche is part of the work of all fairy tales and myths: to allow understanding to grow slowly in us, over time, as we are ready to see more parts of ourselves, and eventually to find something we always had the mysterious power to release.

The idea of a trick ending rightfully captures the imagination. It’s a riddle-like theme that also shows up in fairy tales - the other shoe, a secret potion, a kiss, a key. The answer to the riddle represents possibility, a form of hope that no matter how dark and frightening, there exists a combination of cleverness and magic that could be tapped into, or called upon.

In my version, Ariadne can’t help but peer into the darkness and break the spell, learning enough about herself to know that her destiny isn’t a prince, but freedom itself. Only once we are free can we make choices about love that are also free, including the choice to devote ourselves to the call of creativity.

I wake having not decided on death, though death had come to me.

Before I go, here’s a breadcrumb I promised from Imagine a Woman. She is slowly taking shape through the mist as she comes to us, a book in four parts…

Each section of the book is titled after a feminine archetype: Virgin, Mother, Prophet, and Whore.

You might be more familiar with the three-pronged life cycle: the maiden, the mother, and the crone. I tinkered with that trio, wanting to shed the negative associations with a ‘crone’ as something hideous and closely associated with death. I decided to take what I loved about the crone and make her a ‘prophet’ instead, a woman with elements that we can access across our lifetime and on into the spirit realm, one who acquires wisdom as she journeys, and bears with her an inherent insight, an ability to see the unseen.

The last section, the Whore, is my way of reclaiming a version of ourselves as women that is more often lobbed at us from the outside. I find the word powerful and beautiful in its own way - there is a distinctly ocean-like whoosh of breath that accompanies it when spoken - and I wanted that final section to evoke some of the duality of the erotic, and to reclaim the autonomy of the female body. (This title is also an easter egg from an earlier poem in the book, in the Virgin section - you’ll have to let me know if you notice it, once you have the pages in hand.)

The way out is through the labyrinth…

Coming next month…the full Table of Contents (don’t you love a table of contents?!) plus…a pre-order link! and…a book party invitation!

If you missed last month’s cover reveal, you can catch up on that here. In all my excitement, I forgot to link to the work of my wonderful cover artist (and friend), Jamie Kay MacKenzie.

We are just two months away, one more monthly missive between us and the birth of Imagine a Woman. I’ll see you in May for one last story in this seven-part series.

Thank you for reading,

D.

archive

March 9: Seven Stories: Beauty and the Beast

February 9: Seven Stories: The Little Mermaid

January 9: Seven Stories: Thumbelina (sort of)

December 9: Seven Stories: The Sleeping Beauty

November 9: Seven Stories: Snow White

October 9: Frankenstein Edition

September 9: On Longing

August 9: Productivity and Process

July 9: On Wolves and Women

June 9: Book Announcement

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