Aesop’s ‘The Moon and Her Mother:’ A Modern Reinterpretation
Introduction
In this essay, I will apply a Radical Feminist analysis to a contemporary children’s reinterpretation of Aesop’s fable, ‘The Moon and Her Mother’[1] investigating the fable's "moral" message within the context of modern, Western patriarchal culture,[2] with a specific focus on the fable’s depiction of women, as represented by the symbolic character treatment of the Moon. I will also incorporate a linguistic analysis of the fable using Julia Penelope’s theories on ‘The Patriarchal Universe of Discourse (PUD),’[3] described as linguistic mechanisms for upholding male cultural dominance.[4] The fable is defined as ‘quick stories designed to teach a pointed lesson by indirect means,’[5] which commonly conclude with a moral lesson,[6] and predominantly feature animals and impersonal forces allegorically to represent humans.[7] Regarding the term culture, Terry Eagleton discusses the difficulties inherent within the term,[8] its political motivations for reinforcing ‘moderate’ behaviour within citizens,[9] and its etymological link to the term ‘cult,’ asserting that culture functionally operates with an ‘imposing mantle of religious authority.’[10] Likewise, theologian and philosopher Mary Daly likens patriarchal culture, in particular, to a religion with global influence.[11] This religious dimension of culture will be the primary point of focus for this analysis. An initial contextualization of Aesop and the fable genre will enumerate the relationship between the patriarchal Greek culture of Aesop,[12] the fable’s historical link to slavery,[13] the role of cultural conditioning in perpetuating oppression,[14] and the relevant linguistic biases embedded within androcentric scholarship on fables. Subsequently, Basab Ghosh’s contemporary children’s reinterpretation of ‘The Moon and Her Mother’[15] will be analysed for evidence of limiting depictions of women common within classic children’s stories,[16] including maintenance of the historic androcentric denigration of women and change as negative,[17] and will employ linguistic analyses using Penelope’s theories of PUD.[18] The fable will then be investigated for covert patriarchal indoctrination mechanisms of oppression, through a closer examination of the encounter between the Moon and her mother. Finally, incorporating Eagleton’s call for ‘a new intellectual habit,’[19] ‘known as dialectical thought’[20] within culture, two feminist reinterpretations of the fable will be offered that intentionally presuppose the Moon’s fluctuations as natural, healthy, and instructive, followed by a comparative analysis with the initial fable, to determine if the feminist perspective and the Moon’s symbolism can catalyse genuine dialectical change within the present culture.
A Preliminary Contextualization of Aesop and the Fable
In the introduction to V. S. Vernon Jones’ 1912 translation of Aesop’s Fables, G. K. Chesterton provides a brief overview of Aesop’s life whilst maintaining the hypothetical nature of his historicity.[21] Aesop is believed to have been a slave from Phrygia living around the sixth century B.C.E., who possessed ‘deformity of feature’[22] and was pushed off of a cliff to his death at Delphi.[23] Chesterton additionally speculates whether Aesop was murdered due to his alleged unattractiveness or due to his pointedly ‘correct’ moral critiques of hierarchical Greek society.[24] Significantly, the fable genre has been associated with ‘unequal power’ relationships,[25] with the perspectives of the oppressed,[26] and with their moral criticisms of those in power,[27] and were portrayed by Phaedrus as functioning as ‘a form of servile protest.’[28] Relatedly, John E. Keller and L. Clark Keating describe the Aesopic fable as being ‘organized on the model of the lives and customs of men’[29] (italics added), and their uncritical usage of the pseudo-generic male pronoun,[30] explicitly, if perhaps inadvertently, contextualizes the Aesopic fable within the male-dominated, hierarchical Greek civilization in which it originated.[31]
Importantly, the perspective of the oppressed is inextricably linked to a legacy of violence at the hands of oppressors, and it has been demonstrated that the trauma of such violence shapes their resultant worldview, functioning to preserve the cycle of oppression by conditioning the fearfully resigned oppressed to self-perpetuate it,[32] ultimately calling into question just whose perspective is operative in actuality and casting doubt on the dubious nature of the morality contained within these teachings. For example, whilst seemingly lacking insight into the monolithic homogeneity of patriarchal oppression,[33] Chesterton concludes his introduction with the unironic statement: ‘there is only one moral to the fable; because there is only one moral to everything,’[34] and Kenneth S. Rothwell further serves to explicate this point:
The moral seems to be that the weak must resign themselves to overwhelming power…Fables such as these, then, reflect the pragmatic world view of the peasant or slave who has been taught by bitter experience to accept his role in life. It is a lesson the powerful would like the weak to learn.[35] (italics added)
In addition to his uncritical usage of the reductive labels ‘the weak’ and ‘the powerful,’ which arguably insinuate some form of role predestination, Rothwell continues his obfuscating use of language through syntactic exploitation,[36] by misnaming the non-human abstraction ‘bitter experience’ as the agent of oppression, by minimizing the traumatized condition of slaves into a ‘pragmatic world view,’ by valorising violent oppressors as ‘powerful,’ and by inappropriately using passive voice when referring directly to the oppressors.[37] Through these deceptive linguistic tactics commonly employed within PUD,[38] it can be argued that Rothwell linguistically reinforces attitudinal complicity within his readers, misdirects focus more closely onto the victim, fails to name the oppressor as responsible for the victim’s traumatized worldview, and consequently perpetuates the long-standing patriarchal justifications that the victims of systemic oppression are personally responsible for their resultant conditions.[39] Appropriately contextualizing Chesterton’s closing observations that ‘there is only one moral to everything’[40] within patriarchy, and noting the common patterns of unconscious linguistic and attitudinal bias embedded within androcentric writings,[41] this essay will analyse Aesop’s ‘The Moon and Her Mother’ within the specific context of modern, Western patriarchal culture, to determine if patriarchal history does intrinsically repeat itself.
Aesop’s ‘The Moon and Her Mother’ as a Contemporary Children’s Reappropriation
The following is Aesop’s ‘The Moon and Her Mother’ fable in its complete form, as it appears in Jones’ 1912 translation:
The Moon once begged her Mother to make her a gown. "How can I?" replied she; "there's no fitting your figure. At one time you're a New Moon, and at another you're a Full Moon; and between whiles you're neither one nor the other.”[42]
In this particular fable, the characteristic Aesopic closing moral is missing; however, this may not indicate an absent closing moral in its original form, as paraphrasing and rewriting fables was common classroom practice throughout the Middle Ages,[43] suggesting potential alterations over time. However, the implication that the Moon’s fluctuating shape is somehow problematic is arguably quite clear. A modern children’s YouTube appropriation enumerates this sentiment with the addition of the concluding moral: ‘Nothing ever suits one who is always changing,’[44] positioning the Moon’s changing nature explicitly as a disadvantage. This negative moral slant appears again in Ghosh’s 2020 Bedtime Short Stories retelling,[45] which expounds upon the encounter between the Moon and her mother and offers a similar moral at the end that likewise degrades the Moon’s natural fluctuations into a limitation:
The moon had no choice but to accept the truth and say, ‘I…I understand that you’re right mother.’ That day, a sad moon went back to her bed, awaiting the night to come. But eventually, she came to realize her own beauty and was happy with herself. After that day, the moon never asked for a rainbow-colored cloak, for she knew her own light was prettier than any other rainbow. Moral…Those who change constantly never get what they truly desire.[46] (italics added)
Arguably, in addition to indoctrinating young girls into hesitant speech pattern expectations for women’s submissive dialect within PUD,[47] the above children’s appropriation reinforces the dubious morality of passivity by asserting the Moon has ‘no choice’ other than resignation, when she naturally has a myriad of choices. For example, she can educate her mother regarding shapeshifting garment pattern construction; refuse to illuminate the night sky in protest; use charm, wit, and tenacity to persuade her mother to change her mind; get a job to save money to hire a seamstress; creatively repurpose her mother’s maternity wear for her own use; learn to sew a convertible dress herself, and so on. This passage additionally displays what Daly identifies as the patriarchal deception tactic of reversal,[48] by reverse-labelling a myopic, blatant lie as ‘the truth.’[49] Subsequently, the Moon’s passive resignation is guised as positive self-acceptance, whilst her inherent fluctuating nature is overtly denigrated as negative, displaying an example of the pseudo-logic of doublethink,[50] by sending a logically inconsistent double message that it is possible for the Moon to be both happy with herself as she is and shamed and punished for her true nature. When she inevitably fails to do both of these mutually exclusive things simultaneously, the natural conclusion of such logic is that the fault lies with her,[51] arguably obscuring the reality of an inherently unwinnable set-up, reinforcing the original patriarchal lie of femaleness as a fundamental defect,[52] and disguising psychological oppression with increased sophistication, through the sublimating presence of a misleading, pseudo-progressive, pseudo-positive non-development. An additional analysis of the interaction between the Moon and her mother in relation to covert patriarchal indoctrination mechanisms will be explored in more detail in the next section.
‘The Moon and Her Mother’ as Cultural Exposé
As Patrick McCafferty states, ‘We live in a world where the corpus of myths is often dismissed as fantasy fiction,’[53] asserting a reductive attitude towards mythology within the culture. Relatedly, Karen E. Wohlwend states how children’s tales send ‘identity messages’ that ‘communicate gendered expectations about…who they should be,’[54] serving not as mere entertaining fiction but rather to inculcate stereotypes that can detrimentally impact children’s self-esteem and behaviours.[55] Arguably, this particular Aesopic fable can reveal psychological processes whereby patriarchal oppression is behaviourally perpetuated by its own victims,[56] paradoxically functioning as cultural indoctrination myth and as cultural exposé. For example, the Moon’s mother, herself a fluctuating, menstruating, shapeshifting through birth-giving woman, instils within the Moon a negative worldview of her fluctuating nature, revealing her own identification with oppressor values and her role as agent in implanting oppressor values within her own daughter.[57] Considering Eagleton’s and Daly’s conceptual linking of culture to religion, and Benjamin D. Zablocki’s theories on religious brainwashing tactics,[58] it can be argued that the Moon’s mother typifies the psychology of brainwashing victims, acting as ‘deployable agent’[59] or ‘token’[60] for the perpetuation of patriarchal ideology, operating additionally through a male-mediated perversion of the historic, oral nature of the transmission of women’s mysteries.[61] Relatedly, patriarchal suppression of Indigenous languages is a well-documented tactic of oppression that has also contributed to the destruction of matriarchal knowledge[62] and to the installation of violent attitudes towards women in their place.[63] Additionally, Western women’s sacred knowledge of their own female mysteries has likewise been repressed within patriarchy.[64] Considering this connection between decimated matriarchal knowledge and suppressed language, it can be theorized metaphorically that the Moon’s mother’s Original Mother Tongue has been destroyed by cultural patriarchy, her own women’s knowledge suppressed and supplanted with oppressor ideology, and through male-mediated messages perpetuated via cultural transmission, she now solely speaks the fathers’ tongue of patriarchal indoctrination messages (i.e., male lies) to her own daughter. Thus, this fable can be interpreted as exposing one main mechanism whereby the cycle of male violence continues within patriarchal culture, through the unsuspecting, intercepted mouths and hands of Mothers.
Dialectical Reinterpretations of Aesop’s ‘The Moon and Her Mother’
As Eagleton asserts, ‘a strikingly new kind of reflection, known as dialectical thought’[65] is needed in order to unlock suppressed potentials within a culture. Relatedly, Herbert Marcuse argues that overcoming instilled guilt is necessary to psychically liberate oppressed individuals from identifying with the ‘false fathers.’[66] Both authors link these capacities for revolution to marginalized groups within the dominant collective, but neither author acknowledges women specifically as possessing this potential for new thought, despite their status as oppressed outsiders within patriarchy,[67] who also comprise half of the adult population.[68] Eagleton also notes: ‘There is no need to repress creative capacities which do not exist,’[69] indirectly affirming women’s inherent creative capabilities through the persistent reality of their historic suppression.[70] Likewise, Daly advances women’s revolution as ‘an ontological spiritual revolution,’[71] and identifies the ‘emergence of women’s consciousness’[72] as having the spiritual potential to catalyse ‘radical change’ within the culture.[73] Relatedly, Jack Zipes identifies women as particularly adept at the dialectical creation of new children’s tales, stating: ‘the feminist fairy tale conceives a different view of the world and speaks in a voice that has been customarily silenced,’[74] and Karlyn Crowley and John Pennington describe how feminist theorists have worked to radically reconstruct children’s stories in order to liberate women from the passive roles historically ascribed to them and to enumerate an affirming variety of social alternatives for all humans.[75] For these reasons, I have written two dialectical reimaginations of Aesop’s ‘The Moon and Her Mother,’ with the aim to remove the mythic installation of father-fostered/foisted false guilt, to elucidate potential initiation paths for the Moon with or without an initiated mother, and to advance the feminist perspective as a bearer of dialectical thought within patriarchal culture. Subsequently, these new feminist versions will be followed by an overall comparative analysis with Ghosh’s original.
Version I: Initiated Mother Answers "Yes" to the Moon's Request
The Moon’s Mother intuitively senses her daughter’s request for a vestment signals her readiness for Initiation into Women’s Mysteries and craftily designs a gown to shapeshift with her daughter throughout her Wondrous Phases. Through this ingenious, transformational garment, Mother reveals to the Moon the creative potential inherent within her shapeshifting capabilities. Adorned with her sacred vestment, the Moon develops secret wisdom of how to conceal and hidden knowledge of when to reveal, experiences her own Powers of Rejuvenation, and develops a shrewd sense of Timing, along with the excitement and magnitude of possessing such skills and discernment. In abiding wonder at her own fluctuations, the Moon moves with fluidity throughout her Mysterious Phases, possessing the profound magnetism of an entity fully illuminated by her own Power.
Version II: Uninitiated Mother Answers "No" to the Moon's Request
The Moon realizes in this seemingly sorrowful but deeply auspicious moment, that the problem lies not with her; the problem lies with the ontological lie of the male eye. The Moon experiences an Initiation that opens her eyes to the flaws of patriarchal civilization, that through the painful presence of rejection and appalling absence of acceptance for who she is, simultaneously catapults her to the recognition that she has Nothing to gain within this system and Nothing to lose moving beyond its strictly delineated, profoundly constricting parameters. By shrewdly seeing-through the mechanisms of her Mother’s own victimization, the Moon realises she will never have such acceptance without consenting to self-destructive self-hatred, which is analogous to pseudo-acceptance commingled with certain soul death. She chooses instead to wisely emulate Original Mother and claims her Rite to spiral Out of Control directly into her own Freedom. Emboldened with in-sight behind man-made veils of illusion, the Moon sovereignly follows her own Light and moves in tandem with the genuine Movement of Life. Hence, a celestial beacon and revolutionary Force for others’ liberation, the Moon’s shimmering light of knowing eternally Moonlights the way through the dark, guiding others onto their own brave journey into the Great Unknown. Through embracing Genuine Movement deep within her own true Be-ing, the Moon lights the way, light-years away, to Life beyond the straight and narrow.
Dialectical Reinterpretations: A Closing Analysis
Both dialectical reinterpretations, despite divergent presuppositions, birth an expansion of consciousness within the Moon, deepen her knowledge, elicit creative change, affirm her inherent worth, and grant her empowered autonomy. She displays a genuine shift, as evidenced by a noticeable transformation in her character and by a congruence between her newly expanded inner understanding and her subsequent outer behaviours. By contrast, in Ghosh’s version, the Moon is given instruction that negates movement, aborts change, retains her unquestioning within the status quo, and deceptively guises this stop-action mechanism as "development," whilst arguably instilling what Marcuse describes as a ‘socially engineered arrest of consciousness.’[76] Considering the observable reality of the constant movement inherent within the moon’s fluctuations and within the whole of nature, the contrast between the feminist change-generating fables and the patriarchal change-terminating fable can be summated as aligning respectively with birth versus abortion or womb/tomb life cycles of transformation versus dead, necrophilic circles of repetition. Subsequently, this further contextualized examination of the Moon’s treatment within patriarchal ideology produces the following insight relevant to the initial query of this investigation: that through cultural mechanisms of artificially engendered, oppressive tendencies towards change-inhibition,[77] patriarchal history does, it appears, endemically repeat itself. The Moon’s fluctuating nature, therefore, can illustrate an antidote to change-abortive patriarchal ideology, and the Moon’s symbolic significance as a positive image of change, along with the consciousness-expanding potential of embracing fluctuation rather than refusing it, arguably exemplifies the dialectical, revolutionary thought that Eagleton calls for within culture. By logical extension, this dialectical thought can also be said to require the inclusion of the previously suppressed creative capacities of women and of the integration of feminist-oriented consciousness as vital bearers of such change,[78] through the collective embrace of that which has been systemically repressed and artificially arrested within cultural patriarchy.
Conclusion
This essay analysed a modern children’s appropriation of Aesop’s fable ‘The Moon and Her Mother’ within the context of contemporary Western patriarchal culture, specifically examining the fable’s symbolic rendering of the Moon for biased messages depicting women and change negatively. An initial summation of Aesop’s life was offered, in addition to a contextualization of the Aesopic fable genre within its Greek culture, along with an overview of the original cultural significance of the fable in relation to slavery, power, and oppression. Modern scholarship on fables was examined for androcentric, linguistic bias as identified within PUD,[79] in order to enumerate deceptive linguistic patterns functioning to reinforce oppression. A 2020 children’s story retelling of ‘The Moon and Her Mother’ was then analysed for limiting messages and depictions of women. This examination revealed the mechanisms of reversal as identified by Daly,[80] logically irreconcilable, deceptive double messaging, linguistic maintenance of submissive speech patterns within women,[81] disempowerment of the Moon through the reinforcement of inaction, moral conclusions rendering change as negative, and a misrepresentation of the Moon’s passivity as positive growth. The Moon’s interaction with her mother was then examined in relation to religious brainwashing,[82] and the mechanism of mother as agent was advanced as illustrative of wider patriarchal cultural indoctrination methods,[83] described metaphorically as functioning through prior destroyed knowledge of women’s mysteries and symbolic Mother Tongue. Finally, two feminist reinterpretations of the fable were offered as examples of Eagleton’s dialectical thought, which intentionally presupposed the Moon’s fluctuations as natural, healthy, and creative. Both reinterpretations depicted viable initiation paths for the Moon with or without an initiated mother. A final comparative analysis between the feminist retellings and the patriarchal original revealed they contained change-generating and change-terminating messages respectively. Consequently, the feminist perspective and the Moon were advanced as essential bearers of dialectical thought within patriarchal culture, due to their inherently divergent presuppositions and creative affirmation of change respectively, and by symbolical extension of their evidential potent initiatory capabilities, arguably also contain the potential to usher in radical transformation of cultural consciousness.
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Footnotes [1] Aesop, Aesop’s Fables: A New Translation, Translated by V. S. Vernon Jones (New York: Avenel Books, 1912), The Project Gutenberg ebook, np. [2] Veronica Beechey, ‘On Patriarchy’, Feminist Review, 3 (1979), 66–82 (p. 66). [3] Julia Penelope, Speaking Freely: Unlearning The Lies Of the Fathers’ Tongues, (New York: Pergamom Press, 1990), p. xxvi. [4] Penelope, Speaking Freely, p. xxvi. [5] Kenneth S. Rothwell, ‘Aristophanes, Wasps, And The Sociopolitics Of Aesop’s Fables’, The Classical Journal, 90.3 (1995), 233–54 (p. 233). [6] Graeme Miles and Kristoffel Demoen, ‘In Praise Of The Fable. The Philostratean Aesop’, Hermes, 137.1 (2009), 28–44 (p. 31). [7] John E. Keller and L. Clark Keating, Aesop’s Fables: With A Life Of Aesop, (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), p. 8. [8] Terry Eagleton, The Idea Of Culture, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), p. 7. [9] Eagleton, The Idea Of Culture, p. 22. [10] Ibid. p. 8. [11] Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 39. [12] Val Plumwood, ‘Gender, Eco-Feminism And The Environment’, in Controversies In Environmental Sociology, ed. by Rob White (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 43-60 (p. 43). [13] Rothwell, ‘Aristophanes’, p. 238. [14] Robin, DiAngelo, ‘THE CYCLE OF OPPRESSION’, Counterpoints, 497 (2016), 83–95 (p. 84). [15] Basab Ghosh, Bedtime Short Stories (2020), <https://www.bedtimeshortstories.com/the-moon-and-her-mother/amp> [accessed 15 March 2023]. [16] The Feminists on Children’s Literature, ‘A Feminist Look At Children’s Books’, in Notes From The Third Year: Women’s Liberation, ed. by Anne Koedt (New York: Women’s Liberation Movement Print Culture, 1971), pp. 30-36 (p. 30). [17] Robert Briffault, The Mothers: A Study Of The Origins Of Sentiments And Institutions, Vol. II (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1927), p. 572. [18] Penelope, Speaking Freely, p. xxvi. [19] Eagleton, The Idea Of Culture, p. 26. [20] Ibid. p. 26. [21] G. K. Chesterton, ‘Introduction’, in Aesop’s Fables: A New Translation, Translated by V. S. Vernon Jones (New York: Avenel Books, 1912), The Project Gutenberg ebook, np. [22] Chesterton, ‘Introduction’, ebook, np. [23] Ibid. ebook, np. [24] Ibid. ebook, np. [25] Rothwell, ‘Aristophanes’, p. 238. [26] Ibid. p. 235. [27] Ibid. p. 238. [28] Ibid. p. 235. [29] Keller and Keating, Aesop’s Fables, p. 8. [30] Penelope, Speaking Freely, p. 109. [31] Marilyn Katz, ‘Ideology and ‘The Status of Women’ in Ancient Greece’, History and Theory, 31.4 (1992), 70–97 (p. 72). [32] DiAngelo, ‘THE CYCLE OF OPPRESSION’, p. 84. [33] Daly, Gyn/Ecology, p. 112. [34] Chesterton, ‘Introduction’, ebook, np. [35] Rothwell, ‘Aristophanes’, p. 235. [36] Denise Donnell Connors, ‘Sickness Unto Death: Medicine As Mythic, Necrophilic And Iatrogenic’, Advances in Nursing Science, 2.3 (1980), online, np <https://feminist-reprise.org/library/medicine-and-therapy/sickness-unto-death-medicine-as-mythic-necrophilic-and-iatrogenic/> [accessed 17 March 2023]. [37] Rothwell, ‘Aristophanes’, p. 235. [38] Penelope, Speaking Freely, p. xxvi. [39] Michel Foucault, The History Of Madness, Translated by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa, ed. by Jean Khalfa, (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 55. [40] Chesterton, ‘Introduction’, ebook, np. [41] Carol Christ, ‘Mircea Eliade and the Feminist Paradigm Shift’, Journal Of Feminist Studies In Religion, 7.2 (1991), 75–94 (p. 75). [42] Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, ebook, np. [43] Edward Wheatley, ‘Scholastic Commentary And Robert Henryson’s ‘Morall Fabillis’: The Aesopic Fables’, Studies in Philology, 91.1 (1994), 70–99 (p. 71). [44] Aesop’s Fables Collection, Aesop’s Fable #016: The Moon And Her Mother [video]. 2015 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIZVuZpAF08> [accessed 15 March 2023]. [45] Ghosh, 2020. [46] Ibid. 2020. [47] Penelope, Speaking Freely, p. xxxvii. [48] Daly, Gyn/Ecology, p. 8. [49] Ghosh, 2020. [50] Mary Daly, Pure Lust, (London: The Women’s Press Limited, 1984), p. 51. [51] Penelope, Speaking Freely, p. xxxv. [52] Mary Daly, Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage, (London: The Women’s Press Limited, 1993), p. 151. [53] Patrick McCafferty, ‘Comets And Meteors: The Ignored Explanations For Myths And Apocalypse’, in The Imagined Sky: Cultural Perspectives, ed. by Darrelyn Gunzberg (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2016), p. 37. [54] Karen E. Wohlwend, ‘Damsels In Discourse: Girls Consuming And Producing Identity Texts Through Disney Princess Play’, Reading Research Quarterly, 44.1 (2009), 57–83 (p. 57). [55] Wohlwend, ‘Damsels In Discourse’, p. 57. [56] Daly, Gyn/Ecology, p. 132. 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