an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 14, Winter 2017/2018, ISSN 1552-5112
Carol Gilligan’s Kyra: Myth, Psychotherapy and Relationship
In
the beginning of her germinal study In a
Different Voice (1982), Carol Gilligan, an icon of feminist psychology,
says that her work is concerned with male and female voices within
relationships as portrayed in psychological and literary texts. If turnabout is
fair play, it is appropriate to investigate relationships and voices in her
novel Kyra (2009). This essay will
show how its plot is grounded in the themes that Gilligan has advanced over a
lifetime of scholarship, research, and non-fiction writing, especially her
critique of psychotherapy and the connection between inside and outside. This analysis
will also invoke the myths of Dido and Aeneas and Cupid and Psyche, stories
that Gilligan uses to place her work in context. These are tales that we use to
inscribe and proscribe the human condition, which reveal the structural and
psychological bases of the novel.
THE PLOT
The
central character in Kyra is a 30-ish
architect, on faculty at the Harvard School of Design and without obvious
credentials, who lives with her
sister Anna, a psychotherapist. The novel tells the story of her relationship with
Andreas, a mittel-European opera
director. When they meet in Cambridge,
they are described as “ . . . exiles, strangers in this city, the desperation
of Europe in (their) blood” (2009, p. 40). The remnants and reminders of their
previous marriages resonate throughout their affair, coloring its course,
leading eventually to its foundering.
Kyra
and her sister, her only close relative, seem disengaged from the world outside
their professional duties, perhaps as a withdrawal or refuge from their
family’s having been inadvertently enmeshed in military conflict. Her parents,
refugees from the continent during World War II, met on Cyprus, but instead of
finding peace, are caught up in the Greek-Cypriot wars. By that time, Kyra has
married, but tensions between her half-brother Anton and the rest of the
family, fueled by fascist politics, turn deadly, and Anton murders Kyra’s
husband Simon. Afterwards, her reality was “(N)o touching, no leaning on one
another. It was more or less how I had been living since Simon was killed”
(2009, p. 5).
Her
career is likely something of a prison and may well have been even if Simon had
not perished. He, too, was an architect and their shared ideal of a socially
just architecture may not have come to fruition for Kyra: her aunt tells her
that her mother was wary of her marrying Simon, concerned that he would repress
her talent and drive. Only after reflection does Kyra realize the validity of
her mother’s fears, “Here’s what I didn’t let myself admit. That it wasn’t
perfect. He wanted many children. I needed to do my work. He would say, it
won’t be a problem. I receded into myself. And then he died” (2009, p.196). She
looks to the relationship with Andreas as a way to avoid these hangovers from
her previous reality, as “the possibility of love and freedom” (2009, p. 114).
When he leaves, she finds that “Simon’s spirit returned” (2009, p. 101), and
she reverts to her previous restricted existence.
Andreas,
too, has lost his spouse; his wife Irina, an opera singer, is presumed dead at
the hands of the Russians as they occupied Hungary. When she disappears, he,
his father, and his son Jesse flee to England, fearing for their lives. Andreas’ directing operas is likely a
memorial to his collaboration with his wife; ironically, perhaps, while
courting Kyra, he asks her to design the sets for a deconstructed version of
Verdi’s Tosca, whose heroine is an
opera singer. His work, the memories inherent in it, and the responsibility of
caring for his son and father, may limit his ability to be emotionally engaged
fully with Kyra. He leaves her for an opportunity to start his own company in
Hungary, where he can fulfill “the ambition I had to do opera in a way that
would change how people saw” (2009, p. 214).
The
breakup causes Kyra to cut herself (attempt suicide?); she then enters into a
psychotherapeutic relationship with Greta Blau, and challenges the structure of
the process itself. In the end, the future of the liaison between Kyra and
Andreas is ambiguous.
“INSIDE” VERSUS “OUTSIDE”
A
contrast between inside and outside is introduced early in Kyra. In a public lecture, she and her sister Anna apply this
tension to their respective fields, Kyra stating that the change from the
Romanesque cathedral with closed walls to the Gothic cathedral with openings
filled with windows shows that “The form of the building is essential to the
religious experience. . . this new structure allows the Divine to enter the
material world, creating an interchange between the ‘outside’ and the ‘inside.’”
(2009, p. 27). Anna says that there is a similar exchange in the “inner and
outer structures of human life…the psyche is porous, permeable in a constant
relationship with the world” (2009, p. 26-27).
Both
sisters suggest that these exchanges are grounded in women. Is there a clue
here . . . in the link between Gothic architecture and the cult of Mary on the
other hand and psychoanalysis and the study of hysterical women on the other?
Had a new spiritual or psychological connection with women spurred a new
understanding of the relationship between inner and outer worlds? . . . Does
the exploration of the seen and the felt presence hinge on men coming into a
new spiritual or psychological relationship with women? . . . The change in
architecture has come out of “a new relationship with women, the cult of Mary, notre dame, (a)s psychoanalysis would
come from the study of hysteria, Anna O. (2009, p. 28)1
On
Nashawena, an island off the coast of Massachusetts, Kyra has been given free
rein to create her vision of living and public spaces. Referencing the
woman-ruled civilization that favored art and commerce, the project is called
New Carthage by its patron. Later, at a lecture in Vienna describing her goals
for the physical structure of the installation, she says that she wishes to
create:
.
. . spaces that would encourage peoples’ aspirations without linking ambition
to being at the top. Structures and materials that would challenge conventions
of control and authority by evoking an experience of life as fluid, flowing
from one person to another, one activity to another (2009, p. 192).
This
description of New Carthage reiterates standard feminist grievances about
patriarchal hierarchies but more importantly, repeats the sisters’ analysis of
architectural change and echoes the connection between inside and outside. Kyra
credits the Akha people of Thailand as inspiration since they “believe, like
the builders of the Gothic cathedrals, that the spiritual world infuses the
material world” (2008, p. 191).
Inside/outside
is a thread in the novel in more than one sense and relates directly to Gilligan’s work on women’s psychological
development. In In A Different Voice
(1982) Gilligan and her collaborators conclude that the authentic female voice
becomes interiorized and hidden at adolescence: “Women come to question the
normality of their feelings and to alter their judgments in deference to the
opinion of others” (1982, p. 16). This dissociation causes the inability to
reconcile the inner (authentic) voice with the outer voice required to “fit in”
in the world. The linkage between inside and outside is ruptured, resulting in
an unhealthy influence on the connection between men and women. In other words,
“Without voice, there is no relationship” (2002, p. 229). This rupture can also
be considered a “leaving,” paralleling the separation that occurs at the end of
a psychiatric relationship.
VOICES
The centrality of “voice” and its link to
relationships in Gilligan’s works suggests that it would be fruitful to examine
the “voices” of the main characters in the novel in light of their
relationships. Here, voice will mean both what the individual feels and what
they express to the world. Gilligan’s research showed that ongoing continuity
between the inner and outer realms is not guaranteed; for women, their internal
voices become muted (2002, p. 29). In adolescence, girls often discover that if
they give voice to vital parts of themselves, their pleasure and their
knowledge, they will endanger their connections with others and with the world
at large. The inherent “spunkiness” of young boys, their sense of adventure,
their outgoing nature, along with their tenderness, similarly become restricted
to fit prescribed modes of behavior (2002, p. 69). Analyzing the voices of Kyra’s protagonists will show that the
novelist has (consciously or not) structured their relationships to reflect her
perception of voices and gender dynamics in current society.
KYRA
Kyra is the primary narrator of the
novel. Her external, professional voice
is somewhat flat, that of an academic, explaining her work in ways that are
perceived by her audiences to be successful. After the lecture with her sister
on architecture and psychology, a colleague says “…The artist’s task is to
state the problem correctly and you did that brilliantly” (2009, p. 29).
Andreas says of her talk in Vienna “It was riveting. My attention never
wandered, and the slides were just right. The talk was beautifully crafted”
(2009, p. 195).
After
her relationship with Andreas is established, Kyra’s inner voice is rich and
seductive, giving the novel an aura of lushness, sexuality and warmth. In one
sense, the book is the ultimate female academic’s romance novel, suggested by
the line, “You can’t love a man unless you love his work” (2009, p. 38).
Nevertheless, Kyra is also capable of anger. She feels betrayed by her
therapist’s referencing her in a public lecture – as well she might, as this
could be a breach of professional ethics. She may also feel that her ideas
about the faults in psychotherapy have been appropriated. She is angry at
Andreas for leaving and especially for his not being able to articulate his
reasons for doing so. In spite of her having lived so many years as an
emotional recluse, the sparks of relationship and voice are still present.
ANDREAS
Andreas’
voice is less obvious in the novel than Kyra’s. In the first three-quarters of
the book, we hear Andreas in two ways - through Kyra’s descriptions and in letters
he writes to her. As a director, he makes emotional connections between the
libretto, the music and the psychology of the characters in Tosca, the kinds of connections that
illuminate the plot of the opera and the genius of its creators. It is possible
that Kyra fell in love with his work before she fell in love with him.
(Similarly, Andreas says, “My wife, Irina, she was a singer, a soprano.
Beautiful voice. I fell in love with her voice, and then with her.” [2009, p.
34]). Andreas can appreciate the freedom inherent in young children before the
world imposes its restrictions: “I found myself thinking of Jesse, about this
time with him. It had that quality, that openness to the world” (2009, p. 197).
Sadly, he has boxed himself in, and cannot connect words and emotions in his
relationship with Kyra. His ultimate abdication of voice is that he does not
tell her directly when he decides to return to Europe: instead, she finds out
about his incipient departure from a mutual friend.
He
has little ability to articulate his feelings or imagine the consequences of
his actions. The same common friend tells her “He couldn’t believe he would
hurt you so terribly by leaving” (2009, p. 136). The first letter he wrote to
Kyra after he left abruptly is emotionally inchoate: “I am past the point where
I can accept your love under any terms other than permanently, and I am not at
the point where I can accept it permanently” (2009, p. 101). In sum, at this
point in the novel he appears emotionally stunted and immature.
The
last quarter of the book is written in his voice, which is flat and displays
little affect. Gilligan may be suggesting that men, too, are subject to
constraints on expression. Nevertheless, he seems more in control than
previously and more willing to let go of self-imposed restraints, more willing
to be open to Kyra’s needs.
ANNA
It
is Anna who introduces “inside/outside” with respect to the psychological realm
and it is she who embodies this connection, abandoning her work as a
psychotherapist because it was constantly concerned with the leavings after
inviting relationship, encouraging trust and working through the grief after
its ending. . . “It makes no sense. That’s why I can’t do it any more” (2009,
p. 131). She personally chooses the freedom that Kyra demands of her therapist
Greta Blau, for both their sakes, and which eventually comes to fruition in a
changed relationship.
In
summary, these characters reflect different locations on Gilligan’s spectrum of
emotional authenticity with respect to the relationship between inner and outer
voices. For much of the book, Andreas is unable to break open, even though he
seems desperately to want to do so. Kyra, on the other hand, is successful is
challenging the patriarchy, using her professional voice in her work on
Nashawena and a more private voice in her confrontation with the structure of
psychotherapy. Anna represents one who has already achieved the goals they
aspire to.
THE CUTTING
The
heart of the novel is Kyra’s cutting her wrists after Andreas leaves her to
start his own opera company in Europe. She takes a box of memoirs of her
relationship with him to a hut on Nashawena, where she begins to burn his
letters, catching her hair on fire. When she finds a knife used in the
production of Tosca, she begins to
cut her wrists. At first reading, it seems like an overly dramatic response to Andreas’
leaving, out of character for Kyra herself, since up until this time, she has
been depicted as quite rational, except perhaps for her letting herself become
deeply involved with Andreas. The act appears to be manufactured, a plot
device, to be used as a springboard for introducing the problem Gilligan
perceives with the structure of psychoanalysis.
The
stated objective of the cutting is to see what is real. “I took the knife, I
had to cut through the surface. I had to see inside, to see, to feel what was
real” (2009, p. 115). “When you left in the way you did, everything I thought I
knew, everything I had felt between us, knew in by body, suddenly made no
sense. I didn’t know what was real” (2009, p. 196). It doesn’t seem clear how
cutting her flesh will allow her to reach the “real,” which to her is defined
as her relationship with Andreas being long-lasting.
Kyra
hopes that the psychoanalytic relationship will disclose something “real,” just
as she wished in her relationship with Andreas. Yet, she becomes dissatisfied.
Even though her sister proposed that the entrée to humans’ psychological
“inside” had been achieved through Freud’s breakthrough analysis of Anna O.’s
hysteria, a different psychoanalytic structure to access that interior evolved
later which constrains Kyra’s therapy. “The relationship is not a container for
healing, but is in itself therapeutic. At least that’s the ideal. With the
therapist, people enact the problems of the relationship that brought them into
therapy, but if the therapy relationship itself is problematic, then therapy
only compounds the problem” (2009, p. 27).
Kyra
identifies the problem in the connection between analyst and analysand as
reinscribing the incident that initiated the need for therapy. Since many
crises result from a “leaving,” why does the therapeutic relationship also end
in a leaving? Why does the therapy repeat the trauma? She asks Greta, “Why do you set up this situation, this structure,
in the first place. Why set up a relationship with the ending built in? You’re
asking women to buy this, but my question is, why have you bought it?” (2009,
p. 154)
Greta
responds to this challenge in a public lecture, whose content is brought to
Kyra’s attention by a colleague2, by acknowledging the
structural problems with psychotherapy. She says: “Living in this world, women
have learned to adapt to structures not of their own making, and this
adaptation has to be confronted and changed. . . Some action has to be taken in
the arrangements to demonstrate to the woman that she has the power to change
the situation in which she finds herself” (2009, p. 146). It is a mistake . . .
“to separate therapy or the problems that bring people to therapy from the
society or culture in which it is taking place. Ultimately the process of
change has to extend beyond the individual and affect the family structures,
the religious and political structures that are implicated in people’s
suffering” (2009, p. 147).
When
Kyra informs Greta that she has heard about the lecture, Greta discloses a
traumatic incident in her professional life when she had to silence her own
voice. Eventually, she offers to change the structure of their relationship, a
revolutionary act. She and Kyra are to write their dreams to each other and
comment upon them, sharing their voices from a realm in which they are
unfettered by social conventions.
There
is a chapter (“Free Association and the Grand Inquisitor”) in Joining the Resistance (2011) that gives
Gilligan’s thoughts on the origin of the current structure of psychoanalysis.
Her thesis is that Freud moved away from the insights he obtained from working
with women, in part because this work “broke a cultural taboo . . . by forging
a method of inquiry that placed him in direct opposition to the fundamental
rule of patriarchy: the claim on the part of fathers to authority” (2011, p.
89). Freud’s new method, based in the Oedipus complex, puts Freud (or any
analyst) in the position of interpreter, rather than privileging the voice of
the patient. Thus Freud “aligned psychoanalysis with patriarchy, its inherent
misogyny and its equation of the father’s voice with moral authority” (2011, p.
93). He has abandoned his connection with women to avoid the associated risk of
appearing gullible, incompetent or intellectually naïve by his colleagues.
Freud has left the voices of women behind – the leaving that occurs again and
again in psychotherapy, repressing them in favor of an androcentric myth. This
tension between women-centered work and the Oedipal view becomes inscribed in
the structure of psychoanalysis, reinforcing social attitudes and structures.
MYTHS
Bill
Moyers says in his introduction to The
Power of Myth [s] “the remnants of all that ‘stuff’ (Greek myths) line the
walls of our interior system of belief like shards of pottery in an
archaeological site” (1988, p. xiv). In other words, human behavior is
described in light of particular myths as well as being constrained by them in
ways that may not be obvious. Since Gilligan uses myth to contextualize her
work, it is perhaps not a coincidence that Kyra’s project on Nashawena is
called New Carthage, as this city is central to two myths, the stories of Dido
and Aeneas, and that of Cupid and
Psyche, and each story may be applied to Kyra
- Dido and Aeneas because it inspired the basis of the plot, and Cupid and
Psyche because of its centrality in Gilligan’s investigation of voices and
relationships.
DIDO
AND AENEAS
Gilligan
states that the inspiration for the novel was reading a book review of a recent
translation of the Aeneid by Robert
Fitzgerald, specifically the portion concerning Dido and Aeneas (2009, p. 245).
In the mythical tale, Aeneas leaves Dido, who is queen of Carthage, a
woman-centered place of peace, arts and commerce, to fulfill his destiny by
founding Rome, an androcentric warrior-state. In response, Dido, with her
sister Anna (sic), build a funeral pyre upon which she kills herself by
plunging onto a sword. Aeneas finds her in the underworld where, according to
Gilligan, he says “I couldn’t believe I would hurt you so terribly by going and
I do not understand” (2009, p. 245) This leads Gilligan to wonder how it is
possible that, in the current world, “a sensitive, intelligent man not know the
effects of his action on somebody who he really loved . . . how crazy for a
woman in that situation where you feel somebody is deeply connected to you and
loves you and acts as if there were no connection” (2009, p. 245).
It
is clear how this version of the myth could be the basis for the novel’s plot.
Kyra’s accidentally setting her hair on fire and cutting her wrists parallels
Dido’s self-immolation. Aeneas’ abandoning Dido to fulfill his destiny, as
ordained by the gods, parallels Andreas’ leaving Kyra to fulfill his dream of
having his own opera company. That he chooses to create it in Europe rather
than in the United States - “When I came back to Budapest after a summer in
Nashawena, I felt I had no choice . . . I thought it was my fate to live here”
(2009, p. 214) - in a place more like Rome than Kyra’s Carthage - suggests that
he feels more comfortable in a patriarchal society. Andreas/(Aeneas) eventually
admits that he did not foresee the effect of his leaving: “Before, I had said
that I loved her more than anything, and then I had abandoned her. She couldn’t
make sense of it. I hadn’t seen that” (2009, p. 223).
CUPID
AND PSYCHE
Another
myth that has its origin in Carthage, the story of Psyche and Cupid, recorded
in Metamorphosis or the Golden Ass by
Apuleius, speaks to the inner psychological structure rather than the external
aspects of the novel, to how myth preordains and constrains our actions. To
paraphrase Gilligan’s synopsis of the tale in The Birth of Pleasure (2002), Psyche is the youngest and most beautiful
of a king’s three daughters, more beautiful even than Venus. Since she has not
married, her father consults the oracle Apollo, who prophesies that she is to
be wed to a cruel monster; he then takes her to a wild place and leaves her to
her fate. Meanwhile, Venus is concerned about being usurped and sends her son
Cupid to have Psyche fall in love with the most dreadful of men, but he falls
in love with her himself. Psyche’s sexual self is awakened by Cupid, who visits
her at only night; he tells her that he will leave her if she tries to see him
or to speak of their love.
When Psyche becomes pregnant, her sisters
encourage her to kill Cupid before he kills her and her unborn child, believing
him to be the cruel monster. While preparing to cut off her lover’s head, she
looks at him in the light and discovers she has been manipulated. She touches
one of his arrows to her finger, but presses too hard and draws blood, falling
in love with Cupid. He wakes, discovers that Psyche has seen him, and leaves,
saying he is punishing her merely by leaving. Eventually, Cupid finds that the
punishment he intended for Psyche is punishment for himself; he asks Jupiter to
arrange a marriage in which they are equal and their love is not hedged by
threats of leaving, and they eventually issue a daughter, Pleasure.
Gilligan
believes so strongly in the importance of this tale to understanding
female-male relationship dynamics that she has titled one of her books The Birth of Pleasure (2002). In this
work, Gilligan uses the myth of Cupid
and Psyche to examine Shakespearean plays, offer a close reading of the
emotional shifts in the various versions of Anne Frank’s diary and
contextualize the revelations exposed in several couples’ marital therapy. It
would thus seem appropriate to analyze the relationship between Kyra and
Andreas in light of this myth, with Kyra as Psyche and Andreas as Cupid.
In
the myth of Cupid and Psyche, the rupture of the relationship is preordained,
just as the ending of a psychoanalytic relationship. Cupid lays down the rules,
proclaiming an end to their liaison if she looks at him. In the novel, in
response to Kyra’s saying “I know about betrayal,” Andreas responds, “Then we
both know to be careful” (2009, p. 85), likewise setting boundaries. Just as
Psyche flouts Cupid’s rules, so does Kyra – her revolutionary act is demanding
to speak in her authentic voice, wanting to know what is real in the
relationship with Andreas.
If
the voice of Anna O. was silenced by Freud and replaced with the Oedipus story,
Gilligan believes that the voice of Psyche offers us a way to resurrect women’s
voices. More broadly, “the tension between these two myths, the way in which
one eclipses the other. . . offers us a way of locating our position in the
historic struggle to end the contradiction between democracy and patriarchy. .
. If the Psyche and Cupid myth is the polestar of democracy, the story that
shows a way leading to freedom and to equality between men and women, the
conditions for the birth of pleasure, the Oedipus tragedy is the lodestar of
patriarchy” (2002, p. 226) Thus, Psyche offers a model for the re-envisioning
the expression of voice, interpersonal relationships, psychotherapy and society
as a whole.
CONCLUSION
In Kyra,
Carol Gilligan has distilled much of her life’s work in fictionalized form,
even though she claims that her academic efforts haven’t influenced the novel
(2009, p. 246). Writing fiction allows her to return to earlier, happier days
“Having spent my undergraduate years immersed in Shakespeare and Tolstoy,
Joyce, Faulkner and Woolf, I was taken aback by the readings we were assigned
(in a clinical psychology program): journal articles and clinical cases where
the banality of the descriptions of people and their lives were covered by an
array of numbers, cloaked in what passed for objectivity and conveyed in a
voice of expertise that veiled an attitude of superiority if not contempt”
(2011, p. 79).
All
of her work pivots around dissociation – the change in self-perception and loss
of voice for girls as they transition to women, the loss of sensitivity of
young boys as they become “masculine,” the loss of relationship at the
conclusion of psychotherapy, the loss of women’s voices in Freudian
psychoanalysis, (being replaced by the Oedipus complex), the attendant loss of
connection between the psyche and the outside world (2002, p. 216). The
dissociation is often caused by the shock of a leaving; a shock that is reinscribed
over and over in the book: Kyra’s loss of her husband Simon by murder, Andreas’
loss of his wife Irina presumably by murder, Kyra’s loss of Andreas to his lack
of perception, Kyra’s loss of trust in Greta Blau.
Kyra
speaks specifically to two losses, that of the female voice in psychotherapy
and the loss of Kyra’s relationship with Andreas. On a small scale, within her
own therapeutic relationship, she is successful in challenging the former. It
seems likely that she may regain a more permanent, if unconventional, liaison
with Andreas. The myths referenced here are Gilligan’s way to metaphorically
address the interplay between the external and internal realms and the losses
and gains as humans strive to connect to each other.
What
is even more powerful about the novel is the location of Kyra’s (and
Gilligan’s) challenges within a broader, societal level. Her built environment
on Nashawena aims for connectedness that would affect all who enter it, even
without their seeking it out, and she forces Greta Blau to speak to the embeddedness
and influence of society on psychotherapy and vice-versa. Kyra is well worth reading, not only as a novel per se but also as an expansion and
distillation of Gilligan’s psychological oeuvre.
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 14, Winter
2017/2018, ISSN 1552-5112
NOTES
1.
The
relationship between the cult of Mary and the emergence of Gothic architecture is
more likely correlative rather than causal. Cathedrals, such as those at
Chartres, Paris, Laon, Noyon, Amiens, Rouen and elsewhere, were designed to
“please the queen,” (Cahill, pp.
109-116), while the structural forms were derived from geometry (Gilligan,
2009, p. 27).
REFERENCES
Apuleius.
2011. The Golden Ass. (trans. Sarah
Ruden). New Haven: Yale UP
Cahill,
Thomas. 2006. Mysteries of the Middle
Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe.
New York: Doubleday.
Joseph
Campbell with Bill Moyers. 1988. The
Power of Myth. New York: Broadway Book
Gilligan,
Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice.
Cambridge MA: Harvard UP.
Gilligan,
Carol. 2002. The Birth of Pleasure.
NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Gilligan,
Carol. 2009. Kyra. New York: Random
House
Gilligan,
Carol. 2011. Joining the Resistance. Cambridge
UK: Polity Press.