The "Great mother" in the "Grapes of wrath"

Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos. ne 2 ( 1993 ), pp. 87-96 THE «GREAT MOTHER» IN « THE GRAPES OFWRATH, LORELEI CEDERSTROM Brandon University. Canada Malcolm Cowley regards The Grapes of Wrath as the only proletarian novel of the 1930's to survive into the present era without losing its force. In these terms, the impact of the novel derives from t he continuing relevance of Steinbeck' s theme to the growing economic and social unease in Western culture. This approach limi ts the novel 's importance to social commentary, however, and fails to deal with its emotional power, a force based upon Steinbeck's activation of a powerful archetype. Steinbeck, in analyzing the problems of the 1930's had, perhaps unconsciously, arrived atan alternative to the dominant structures of Western culture. This alternat iv e surfaces among the people who are the first victims ofthe decline ofthe old order, the migran! families. The failure of Western civilization to provide the necessities for these disinherited wanderers leads them to establish a more primitive social order; ultimately, the migrant families form matriarchal structures. Concurrent with the development of the matriarchy is the irruption of images, pattems, and attitudes associated with the most primitive forrns of the matriarchal de ities. Throughout the novel, archetypal manifestations of the feminine irrupt in the form of the «Great Mother.» The powerful closing scene ofthe novel provides, in iconographic form, a vision of the Great Mother: «Rose of Sharon loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. 'You got it,' she said. She squirmed closer and pulled his head close. 'There! · Her hand moved gen ti y in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips carne together and smiled mysteriously .» 1 The power of this image indicates the pre sen ce of J. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York Modern Library, 1939), p. 618-9. Ali further refcrences to this text will be idcntified by page numbers in parentheses. 88 lorelei Cederstrom a powerful archetype. Sensing an archetypal pattern, critics have related Ro se of Sharon to the Madonna, and her nurturing gesture has been seen as a manifestation of Chrislian !ove. One must keep in n'lind, however, that Rose of Sharon is nota mother su ck ling herchild; her baby was born dead, «a blu e shriveled little mummy» (603). At her breast is a stranger, a starving man, a fellow refugee from a rising flood that has airead y destroyed man y homes and families. This gesture and this simile are archetypal, however, and the necessary culmination of Steinbeck 's novel, for it is in this aff irrnation of the nourishing power and endurance of the feminine that the Great Mother is evident. It is necessary to define the limits ofthis archetype as Steinbeck has used it, for in h er man y facets, the Great Mother encompasses virtually everything. « Woman = bo dy = vessel = world,» is the formula Erich Neumann2 has given to the all-enclosing quality of the archetype. In The Grapes ofWrath, the Great Mother appears in both her elementary and transformative characters. In the former, she appears as a primordial spirit bchind the forces of nature, manifesting herse lf in earth and sky, crops and fam ine, rain and flood. In her elementary character she is also pres en t in the home and in thc cultural activities that grow out of the establishment of facilities for sleep, food preparation and so on. In her transformative character, the Great Mother is a force for change in the individual and society; this change may involve growth or destruct ion , rebirth or death, for both are within her domain. This last point must be empha size d for destruction is as mu ch a part of the Great Mother as is creation; s he who gives life ca n also bring death to the natural world or the individual. A primitive icon of the Great Mother, the nineteen th century Indian statue of Kali dancing on Shiva,3 indicates bot h aspects of her character. Kali holds a sword of destruction in her upraised hand, and holds out a bowl of nourishment in the other. This kind of ambivalence is pre sent throughout Steinbec k's novel and is profoundly expressed in the final scene when a man near death by starvation and flood, two disasters associated with primitive eart h goddesses like the Great Mother, is g iv en the nourishing breast, the most element ary symbol of her lif e-giving quality. The ambivalence between creative and destructive qualities is experienced on its most basic leve) as an attribute ofMother Earth. In Steinbeck 's ear lier novel, To A God Unknown (1933). the lndian, Juanito, passes on to the white homesteader a bit of inherited wisdom: «My mother said how the earth is our mo ther and how everything that li ves has li fe from the moth er and go es ba ck into the mother.» It is apparent from the beginning ofThe Grapes ofWrath that man ha s lost contact with the living qualities ofthe earth. The corn grows, Mother Earth is still fertile, but the crops arecovered with 2. It is necessary to establish my indebtcdness to Erich Neumann 's t ho rou gh anal y sis of the archetypal feminine in The Crear Mother (Princeton, Princeton Un iv ersity Press, 1963). 3. !bid .. Plates. p. 65. The «Great Mother>> in «The Grapes of Wrath» 89 dust. The land has been raped; growing the same crop year after year has sucked the life from the earth. The Joad family suffers because it has been guilty of this kind of neglect. «'Ever' year,' said Joad, 'Eve ry year I can remember, we hada good crop comin' an' it nev er carne. Grampa says she was good the first five plowin' s, while the wild grass was still in her'» (37). The novel opens man y years after the last of the wild grass; the land is not even owned by people anymore but by banks or corporations. The matriarchal consciousness has also been lost, for Neumann notes that it is dependent upon man's «participation mystique with his environme nt » (Great Mother, 293). The new relationship to the land is one of unemotional domination. «No man touched the seed, or !usted forthe growth. Men ate what they had not raised, hadno connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses» (49). The new man is a «machine man» who sits on an iron seat on an iron horse. Efficiency has replaced wonder; contempt has replaced understanding. Steinbeck has embodied these concepts in a number of small details as well. Tom Joad, retuming to his home, discovers that ali the artifacts which symbolize alife close to the earth are askew. The well is dry; there are no weeds under its trough. The house is aslant, ali of the windows are broken, and there is a hole where there once was a stove-pipe. The machine man's lunch is another detail ofthis kind. lt is wrapped in waxed paper and ali his food is processed: Spam, white bread, «a piece of pie branded like an engine part» ( 49). The result of this process of alienation from the land, the Great Mother, is separation and exile. The machine man «goes home, and his home is not the land» (158); theJoads ha ve neither home norland. The women in the novel are divided between those who have no relationships to the earth, land, or the life force, and those who have at Ieast a vestigial feminine consciousness, an awareness that becomes stronger in severa! characters as the novel progresses. Th e women of the former type are nameless. They have no individuality because they are defined by the objects with which they surround themselves: big cars, cosmetics, clothing and pot-bellied husbands. Their feminine attributes are disguised: breasts are confined, «Stomachs and thighs st raining againstcases of rubber» (211 ). Womenare alsodistinguished in terms of their relationship to time. The matriarchal co nsciousness is at work when a woman senses a relationship to the cycles of nature. People living close to the land, or primitive peoples, experience a sense of cyclic time in the seaso ns and recurrence of crops. Linear time, history, life seen in terms of progress from one point to another, are ali modem, masculine concepts appended to the basically cyclic pattem of life on earth.4 Women, even in an industrial society, experience themselves, at least, in terms of biological cycles. These nameless women on the road, however, have accepted lin ear time and ha ve lost the regenerative capacity that comes from an acceptance of oneself in terrns of an 4. This discussion of linear and cyclical time is dependent u pon the formulation of these concepts ofMircea Eliade in Cosmos and Hisrory (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 19 71 ). 90 Lorelei Cederstrom etemally recurring pattem. Steinbeck is explicil about lhis; the eyes ofthese women are «sullen, disliking sun and wind, earth, resenting food and weariness, hating time that rarely makes them beautiful and always makes them old» (211). Unlike the nameless ones, the Joad women have retained a closeness to their archetypal heritage. As a group the three are manifestations of the three ages of the Great Mother: hag, mother, and nubile daughter. The youngest girl, Ruthie, remains outside; she has not yet achievedher initiation into womanhood, so she merely watches and leams. Granma is shrill, ferocious, and assertive, true to her mythical forebears, Hecate, or Athene as Crone. It is reported that she once shot off one of Granpa's buttocks, a symbolic castration, which would indicate at the very least a strong lendency toward matriarchal dominance. Her life-force is apparent; she outlasts her mate, and Ma humorously comments that grief was not one of her pre-dominant qualities as «She always ate a good meal ata funeral» (238). Granma is partof nature's cyclic pattems. Before her death, her mind wanders and she becomes «like a little baby» (239). A sense of the recurrent pattems of which she is a part is suggested by the mysterious whisperings between dying granma and pregnant Rose of Sharon. Ma , we are told almost immediately, is the «citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken» (100). Woman asan encompassing shelter is one ofthe primordial manifestations of the Great Mother. Moreover, she is the source of the family and its emotions; her position is «great and hum ble.» Her beauty has arisen out of her services within the family: «From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgement as a goddess.» The first time Ma appears she is cooking pork, food from an animal that is associated with her throughout the novel. Neumann notes that «the pig is a symbol of the archetypal feminine and occurs everywhere as the sacrificial beast of the Earth Goddess» (139). It is the pork that Ma has salted and prepared that keeps the family alive on the road. Ma 's relationship to life indicates an awareness of cyclicality. On the road, the menare concemed with maps, mi les, and time: «from Sallisaw to Gore is twenty-one miles and the Hudson was doing thirty-five miles an hour. From Gore to Warner thirteen miles; Warner to Checotah fourteen m il es; Checotah a lon gjum p to Henri ettathirty-fourmiles, but a real town at the end of it» (167). To Ma, however, «it 'sj us ' the road goin' by forme. An' it' sj us' how soon they gonna wanta eat sorne more pork bones» ( 168-169). Befare the jo urney, Ma was just one voice among many in making group decisions. As the novel progresses, she becomes more dominant. She decides when they will stop or go on. Pa threalens to reestablish patriarchal dominance with the side of a shovel to her head, but acquiesces to her rule every time. Offthe land, and not yet a part ofthe industrial society, the Joads are forced into primitive, matriarchal cultural patterns. Preparing food and making shelter are th e primary social needs, and Ma is the prime mover in creating this primitive kind of civilization. A simple conversation between Ma and Pa establishes this clearly. The «Great Mother» in «T he Grapes of Wrath» 91 ... 'F unny! Woman takin' over the fambly. Woman sayin' we'll do this here, an' we' 11 go there. An' 1 don' even care.' 'Woman can change better'n a man,' Ma said soothingly. 'Woman got ali her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head. Don' you mind. Maybe -well, maybe nex' year we can get a place.' 'We got nothin', now,' Pa said ... 'Seems our life is over and done!' ' No it ain 't ,' Ma smiled. 'It ain 't, Pa. An that's one more thing a woman knows. I noticed that. Man, he lives in jerks-baby boro, an' a man di es, an' that' s ajerk. Woman, it's ali one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on--changin' a little, maybe, but goin' right on! (577) Ma has achieved a position of dominance in her society because she is a carrier of inherited matriarchal folk-wisdom. She knows about burial rites, for example; Grampa is sewed neatly into his shroud, coins placed on his eyes to pay his way across the Styx. Ma also presides at births. She initiates Rose of Sharon into womanhood before she gives birth by piercing her ears. «Does it mean sompin?» Rose of Sharon asked. «Why, 'course itdoes, ... 'course it <loes» Mareplied ( 485). Everything Ma does is in accord with her function as an archetypal mother. She experiences herself as a provider of nourishment; others experience h er as a source of strength. Her character has a positive effect on those around her for it is firmly rooted in the generating spirit of the Great Mother. Rose of Sharon is primarily a representation of the fecundity of the Great Mother. At th e beginning of the novel, she experiences her self and the world in terms of her condition: «the world was pregnant to her; she thought only in terms of reproduction and motherhood» (130). Her relationship with her mate, Connie, has a significance that Neumann attributes to the Great Mother, «Fecundation,» he notes, «makes the woman into a numinous being for herself and for the male» (270). To Connie, it seems as if «the world had drawn close around them and they were in the center of it, or rath er Rose of Sharon was in the center of it with Connie making a small orbit about her. Everything they said was a kind of secret» (176). Once they are offth e Iand, however, Rose of Sharon succumbs to the pressures of the patriarchal society. Connie's dreams focus upon a new life in the machine age; he wants to work in astore , a factory, or le arn a technical trade. Rose of Sharon dreams of having her baby with a doctor and in a hospital, acquiescing entirely to male usurpation of feminine functions. After Connie's desertion, Ma re-orients Rose of Sharon to the old patterns, directing and encouraging her. The price of Rose of Sharon 's alienation from her matriarchal roots is the death of her baby. While she is recovering, Ma imparts women's secrets to her: «Ma lay close to Rose of Sharon. Sometimes Ma whispered to her a nd sometimes sat up quietly, her face brooding» (61 2 ). Tt is at Ma's direction that she nourishes th e starv in g man. Her enigmatic sm ile while suckling a stranger is 92 Lorelei Cederstrom at least partially inspired by Rose of Sharon's new experience of herself. The production of milk is an ancient transformation mystery; it involves the movement from nubility to motherhood focussing a woman 's awareness ofherself as a nurturing force. Rose of Sharon's relationship to the world has changed from an inner-directed self-sufficient one to a loving and protective view. Joy and heightened awareness of oneself are the rewards of recognizing an archetypal expression; Rose of Sharon' s generosity and joy are based on her recognition of th e Great Mother within. The male characters in the novel experience the transforming power of the feminine as well. Neumann notes that: «the male experiences this aspect of the feminine directly and indirectly as provocative, as a force that sets him in motion and impels him toward change» (32). Each of the men in the novel undergoes a transformation, for sorne it is a creative alteration, for others it is destructive. It is quite plain thatthe mate characters are transformed by the Great Mother, by their relationship to the feminine principie, rather than by Christian or social principies. Steinbeck has created strong male characters in severa) of his novels, most notably in To A God Unknown and East of Eden, but one looks in vain for strong patriarchal attributes in either Pa or Grampa. Grampa, for example, was a force to be reckoned with until he left the land; it took only a few days of separation from his vital relationship to the earth for him to die. Pa, too, once off the land, becomes more and more an auxiliary of Ma' s, indicating a consistent dependence on the feminine whether manifested in Iand or woman. Pa's relationship to feminine principies is, however, one of fear or misunderstanding, a fault for which he pays. He does not know how to insure the fertility ofhis Iand; the constant raising of one crop interfered with the basic needs of theearth. As a result, he is driven from his land. Noah, his first son, has been sacrificed to his fear ofthe fundamental transformation mystery ofbirth. «For on the night when Noah was born, Pa, frightened at the spreading thighs, alone in the house, and horrified at the screaming wretch his wife had become went mad with apprehension. Using his hands, his strong fingers for forceps, he had pulled and twisted the baby. The mid-wife, arriving late, had found the baby's head pulled out of shape, its neckstretched, its b ody warped; and she had pushed the head back and molded the body with her hands. But Pa always remembered and was ashamed» (106). As a result, Noah is strange, aloof, and alienated from the rest of the family. Halfway to California, however, Noah undergoes a symbolic rebirth, a baptism which brings him back into connection with the Great Mother. The rite of passage takes place in a river where the men ha ve come to wash and cool themselves. The river is shallow; sitting, their bodies are covered but «their heads stuck out of the water» (277) suggesting that the power of the archetypal feminine is not an intellectual power but a physical or spiritual one. Noah, whose intelligence was already in question, is the first to re spond to the call of the Great Mother. «I was in that there water. An' 1 ain 't a-gonna leave her. I'm a gonna go now, ... down the river. I'll catch fish an' stuff, but I can 't lea ve her. I can't» (284). Noah's use ofthe feminine pronoun is significant here. When told that Noah is gone, Pa still The « Great Mother» in « The Grapes of Wrath» 93 does not understand, and this failure places him in the position of a child in the family, subservient to Ma, who seems to understand everything. The case for the matriarchal resurgence in the novel is challenged by the conventional interpretations of the function of Jim Casy. He has been seen by many critics as a Christ figure.5 lt is obvious that Casy shares not only Christ 's initials, but a basic message of love and a willingness to sacrifice him s elf for his fellow man. His relationships with women, however, separate him firmly from Christ. Casy is no longer a preach er beca use love of God and religious ecstasy led him to express that lo ve physically. «Tell yo u what,» he said, «I used ta get the peo ple jumpin' and talkin' in tongues, an' glory-shoutin' till they just fell down and passed out ... An' then -y ou know whatl'd do ? l'd take one ofthemgirl s out in the grass, an' l'd lay with her. Done it ever' time» (29). Casy found that the women to whom he preached also equated religious ecstasy with sexuality, which led him to question how this so-called working of the devil could be present when a woman felt full of the divine spirit. Neumann 's answer is that sexuality is a manifestation of a divine principie more ancient than those in which Ca sy had lived and preached. Casy tries to articulate this divine principie and ends up with a kind of oversoul theory: «' maybe it's all menan' ali women that we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human speritthe whole shebang. Maybe ali men got one big soul ever' body's a part of'» (32-33). He explicitly denies the relationship of this principie to God or Jesus. This oversoul is a pagan one, li ke Whitman 's, in whichsexuality i san expression of divinity. Steinbe ck's own comments on the soul are useful here. It is reported that upon visiting a church, he could not refrain from responding to the minister's comments on the necessity of nourishing the soul: «'a lotofcrap' ,»he remarked, ratherloudly, «'if the soul is immortal, why worry about it-it 's the body that- '» 6 Casy express es guiltat having betrayed his Christian principies, but his experience of woman as a «holy vessel» leads him to take her to the grass time and again. It is the body that is importan! to Casy as well. Casy also felt alienated by the seriousness of Christianity. He enjoys laughing at the hackneyed joke about the bull and the heifer. Unlike the Father whom Jesus worshipped, Casy's god is a god unknown. Moreover, it is a divine principie th at expresses itself through a feeling of oneness with the natural world. «Sometime l'd pray like I always done. On'y I coun' figure what 1 was prayin' to or for. There was the hills, an' there was me, an' we wasn't separate no more. We was one thing. An' that one thing was holy» (110). 5. There are severa( Christian interpretations of The Grapes of Wrath, such as; Louis Lisca's in The Wide World of JohnSt einbeck (New Jersey, 1958), p. l 74f. and Lester Ja y Marks' Thematic Design in The Novels of John Steinbeck (The Hague, 1969), p. 76f. 6. Robert Bennett, The Wrath of John Steinbeck or St. John Goes to Church (Los Ange les, Albertson Press, 1939). This pamphlet has no pagination, the quotation appears on the th ird last page. 94 Lorelei Cederstrom Onjoining the Joad faroily, the first thing Casy does is help to slaught er a pig. The importance of the pig as a sacrificial beast of the Great Mother has airead y been mentioned. This slaughter was, for the most part, just men's work on the farro; Casy, however, goes beyond the actions of the other roen. He apprentices himself to Ma and helps her salt down the meat, thereby becoming an initiate in to one of the fundamental mysteries of the Great Mother, that of food transformation. Ma is dubious at first, « lt ' s a woman 's work» she protests. «'lt's all work,'» ( 146). In ordeno see Casy as a Christfigure too much of his character has to be left out. If he is seen as the unconscious prophet of a priroitive earth goddess, both his sexuality and his feeling that «ali that lives is holy» ( 196) and «W hat people does is right» (289) can be taken into account. Nor do Casy's sacrifices of himself take him beyond the realm of the Great Mother, for she has always demanded sacrifices in her honor. Pain and deprivation are associated with her roost primitive rituals. Casy's first sacrifice was for the Joad faroily, the second for the family of man. Casy' s last words are reminiscent of Christ's as he tells the men who are attacking him: «You don't know what you're a-doin.» But his rationale for this remark was not that they did not know they were killing a son of god but that they did not know that they were «starvin' kids,» (527) a basic concern of the Great Mother. Tom is more nearly a Christ figure than Casy, but he is profoundly the son of his mother. Before he goes off into the world, he undergoes a symbolic re-entry into the womb. While he is hiding in a cave, his mother brings him nourishment in the darkness, and he discusses with her his plans to aid the other migrants by organizing them. He visions an apotheosis for himself, one in which he is absorbed in to a maternal darkness, maintaining a transcendent presence at food rituals. «1'11 be ali aroun' in the dark. I'll be e ver' where -wherever yo u look. Whenever they 's a fight so hungry people can eat, 1'11 be there ... » (572). His transformation is the result of his recognition of the needs of a developing matriarchal consciousness in which the needs ofthe family, the earth, and those who live clase to it, are primary. The transformation in Un ele J ohn has taken place befo re the novel opens. He is punishing himself with drink and celibacy for contributing to the death of his wife. He remains in the background of the novel for the most part, a kind of living reminder of the fai lure of patriarchal values. Ma gives him a bit of appropriate and useful ad vice when she wams him not to burden others with his crimes against life. «Don' tell'em,» she warns, «go down the river an' stick yourhead und eran' whisper 'em in the stream» (365). John does not take her advice at this point, but, at the end of the novel, he perfom1s a ritualistic sacrifice in the river to make reparation to the Great Mother for ali of their sins. He takes Rose of Sharon 's dead baby and casts it on the stream as a warning to others. «Go down an' tell 'em. Go down in the street an' rotan' tell 'em that way. That's the way you can talk... Maybe they'll know then.» (609) Al Joad, with his mechanical skills is, at the beginning ofthe novel, a man ofthe new age. His abilities to keep the car running involve severa! small miracles. By the The «Orear Mothen in «The Grapes of Wrath» 95 last scene, however, he has been absorbed by matriarchal principies and matrilinear necessities. He lea ves his own family for the family of his wife, a custom demanded by the matriarchal rules of migrant living. Beyond the references to theGreat Motherin his characters, Steinbeck 's descriptions of the mi grant camps also indicate a strong matriarchal principie at work. «In the evening, a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children we re th e children· of all» (264 ). The highlights oflife in these camps, culminating in the Weedpatch camp, are the rituals that formed around the basic functional spheres ofthe feminine. Birth and death are the basis of community celebrations: «And it might be that a sick child threw despair in to the hearts of twenty families, ofa hundred people; that a birth there in a tent kept a hundred people quiet and awe-struck through the night and filled a hundred people with the birth-joy in the morning» (264). Food preparation and laundry are social events on a smaller scale. Ma , for example, found herself feeding twenty or more waifs in one can1pground. She is also told about the archetypal laundry rituals: « You wait till the wornen get to washing .. . know what they did yesterday, Mrs. Joad? They hada chorus. Singing a hymn tune and rubbing Lhe clothes ali in time. That was something to hear, l tell you» ( 415). The principies on which families are established are based on the needs of women and children. The legal aspects of marriage, invented so that men can pass on their names and property, are no longer useful. The rules are simple: «a man might have a willing girl if he stayed with her, if he fathered her children and protected them. But a man might not have one girl one night and another the next, for this would endanger the worlds» (266). It is this last social cus tom, a matrilinearprinciple, that was r es ponsible for Al leaving the Joads. It was not a desertion of the famil y, but a re-establishment of the basic principies from which the family developed. Steinbeck makes it clear that the life in camp is nota fundamentalist Christian communism. Rose of Sharon is frightened by a dour Christian woman who warns her against the sinful dances and wicked plays that are held in the camp. insisting that: «they ain 't but a few deep down Jesus-lovers l ef t» (422). During the danci ng , the «Jesus-lovers» rernain aloof and keep their children under el ose scrutin y, safely protected from these pagan celebrations. Ma , however, urges Rose of Sharon to attend the festivities, telling her that she will be especially welcome because «it makes folks happy to sce a girl in a fambly way» (460). Readers and critics of this novel who fail to see the developing ma triarchal consciousness are forced to view Steinbeck 's final messa ge in naturalistic terms, seeing humans helpless and at the merey of the elements in the last sce ne when the diminished familyMa , Pa, Rose o fS haron, Ruthie and Winfield-are driven from their boxear home by the rising river. Other critics, unwilling to accept the impli ca tions of the ending for their theories about the Christian or communistic patterns. ha ve tend ed to co ncur inst ea d that «the ending is intentionally inconclusive.»7 The emphasis on 7. Warren French, Ed., A Compa 11i o11 To Grapes <f Wrath (New York, 1963), p. 93.