Princess to Queen
Jan. 21st, 2004 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosFor the past several years I have been working on the challenge of moving beyond the Princess archetype to that of the Queen. This morning, following a link from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tamnonlinear, I found this marvelous piece of writing by shellefly
I Need to Change My Archetype
It has been happening to me a while, this transition from pampered princess to regal Queen, but I keep, Peter-panlike refusing to grow up. I was that girl, fluffy and petulant, covered with flowers, wearing silk slippers ...
"In a faerie tale world, she's a lost soul singing
In a sad voice no one can hear.
She waits in her castle of make believe
For her white knight to appear." --Pussy Willow, Jethro Tull
This is how I saw myself, and this is how I was. It is easy to sit on your gossamer chaise waiting for someone to change your life, to make the sun rise and hand you all your dreams in a nosegay. Waiting and waiting, the princess watches life go by never realizing that she can be her own dreams' architect - if she only WOULD. Her dreams do not need to be bound into this image in armor, this valiant champion ... but they are. She is a creature of tradition, and tradition keeps her bound and passive.
This is how I see myself, and this is not who I am. I have grown and my clothes have not grown to fit me. They lie on the floor discarded as I admire my mature curves in my magic mirror, my mirror up to nature that is my glass and my metaphor. The girl has become a woman, and the woman looks foolish in short dresses and Mary Jane shoes. The woman mocks the girl, in fact, as she dresses herself in sleek black garments and sharp-toed boots. She is the Queen, but she is also the witch.
She isn't sitting in a window waiting for the sound of hoofbeats, carried on a lonely wind. Oh no, the Queen is busy running the household, kissing the King as he shuffles by between charters and audiences; she is occupied with organizing the beautiful decor, ordering the stock from the nearby town, and she is hatching her own clever plots. If the Queen wants to ride away on a white horse, she will summon her own mount from the stables and fly off into the wind, coal-black hair streaming behind her, red lips promising kisses untold. She is the woman princes despise, for she will not collapse into their arms with a silken sigh, ready to submit to their superior strength, she is the woman that they admire and fear.
For you see, little white knights with your desire to rescue the frail and helpless maiden, it is no longer your adoration that validates me. It is not yours, nor the King's nor any courtiers. I shall be judged by my deeds, and since a woman is so brave as to carve her own path through the rotting hedges of ancient tradition into the next day's dawn, she shall be called wicked. Perhaps she shall burn. Burn me then. Burn my flesh, my vellum, crinkle my pages to ash. You may revile me, you may adore me, you may lust after me and lash your back to strips in your own quiet cell for your sinful thoughts, you may love me or hate me ... but you will never forget me.
And oh, my dear princess, my old abandoned self in white ribbons and soft-soled slippers, take this apple and eat. Take the apple as Eve did, as we all do, for that which does not kill us makes us stronger.
It wasn't so much that I was waiting for a prince to ride in on a white charger and give me a kiss, thus starting my "real" life, but that I was afraid to stride forward in my own name to claim my power and follow my dreams, because I might be considered "not nice." Or I might stray too far outside the borders of the safe and the respectable and bring down some vague but dreadful fate involving the disdain, disappointment or disapproval of others. I am appalled that such thoughts ever had power over me -- or that they can still reach out with bony fingers and cause me to hesitate or to question myself.
tamnonlinear, I found this marvelous piece of writing by shellefly I Need to Change My Archetype
It has been happening to me a while, this transition from pampered princess to regal Queen, but I keep, Peter-panlike refusing to grow up. I was that girl, fluffy and petulant, covered with flowers, wearing silk slippers ...
"In a faerie tale world, she's a lost soul singing
In a sad voice no one can hear.
She waits in her castle of make believe
For her white knight to appear." --Pussy Willow, Jethro Tull
This is how I saw myself, and this is how I was. It is easy to sit on your gossamer chaise waiting for someone to change your life, to make the sun rise and hand you all your dreams in a nosegay. Waiting and waiting, the princess watches life go by never realizing that she can be her own dreams' architect - if she only WOULD. Her dreams do not need to be bound into this image in armor, this valiant champion ... but they are. She is a creature of tradition, and tradition keeps her bound and passive.
This is how I see myself, and this is not who I am. I have grown and my clothes have not grown to fit me. They lie on the floor discarded as I admire my mature curves in my magic mirror, my mirror up to nature that is my glass and my metaphor. The girl has become a woman, and the woman looks foolish in short dresses and Mary Jane shoes. The woman mocks the girl, in fact, as she dresses herself in sleek black garments and sharp-toed boots. She is the Queen, but she is also the witch.
She isn't sitting in a window waiting for the sound of hoofbeats, carried on a lonely wind. Oh no, the Queen is busy running the household, kissing the King as he shuffles by between charters and audiences; she is occupied with organizing the beautiful decor, ordering the stock from the nearby town, and she is hatching her own clever plots. If the Queen wants to ride away on a white horse, she will summon her own mount from the stables and fly off into the wind, coal-black hair streaming behind her, red lips promising kisses untold. She is the woman princes despise, for she will not collapse into their arms with a silken sigh, ready to submit to their superior strength, she is the woman that they admire and fear.
For you see, little white knights with your desire to rescue the frail and helpless maiden, it is no longer your adoration that validates me. It is not yours, nor the King's nor any courtiers. I shall be judged by my deeds, and since a woman is so brave as to carve her own path through the rotting hedges of ancient tradition into the next day's dawn, she shall be called wicked. Perhaps she shall burn. Burn me then. Burn my flesh, my vellum, crinkle my pages to ash. You may revile me, you may adore me, you may lust after me and lash your back to strips in your own quiet cell for your sinful thoughts, you may love me or hate me ... but you will never forget me.
And oh, my dear princess, my old abandoned self in white ribbons and soft-soled slippers, take this apple and eat. Take the apple as Eve did, as we all do, for that which does not kill us makes us stronger.
It wasn't so much that I was waiting for a prince to ride in on a white charger and give me a kiss, thus starting my "real" life, but that I was afraid to stride forward in my own name to claim my power and follow my dreams, because I might be considered "not nice." Or I might stray too far outside the borders of the safe and the respectable and bring down some vague but dreadful fate involving the disdain, disappointment or disapproval of others. I am appalled that such thoughts ever had power over me -- or that they can still reach out with bony fingers and cause me to hesitate or to question myself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-21 03:51 pm (UTC)fascinating... this has resonances with the snow white myth as well as eve. kinda creepy. :>
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-21 03:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-21 05:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-21 08:44 pm (UTC)It seems to me, however, that the Prince archetype has a very different feeling from that of the Princess. The Princess awaits the male figure who will bring her to fullness. The Prince, it seems (on very brief reflection) is one who either is stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for the King to die, or who must strike out on his own initiative to slay the dragon, or draw the sword from the stone, and Prove His Worth in order to become King.
What's your sense of it?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-21 09:52 pm (UTC)I didn't think deeply about it, and I was only thinking about relationships part of it from my POV really - how much better to have a grown-up relationship with a Queen-type than an unequal relationship with a sappy dependent (however adoring and pocelain beautiful) Princess-type.
I'm not used to thinking in archetypes (perhaps except the ones I take for granted?)!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-22 07:25 am (UTC)In my meditations, I have a tendency toward mythological, dramatic archetypes -- but perhaps the archetypes you reference are couched in more ordinary language: The Strong Silent Type, the Good Mother, the Good Provider, and etc. I think these can be more powerful and more insidious because they are so mundane and familiar we discount their influence.