George MacDonald was a symbolist of the first order. His choice of words (and their philological meanings), visual symbols, as well as literary, historical, and scientific allusions abound in his novels and stories. These were often chosen to open the minds of his readers, reducing the possibility of limiting a singular interpretation to a story or event. He believed that a person’s creative imagination is derived from the Divine imagination and that God’s meanings are infused throughout history and creation.
As MacDonald wrote in his essay The Fantastic Imagination:
“For in everything that God has made, there is a layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God's things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time things that came from thoughts beyond his own.”[1] (bold italics mine)
In previous essays, I have argued that two sources resided in MacDonald’s imagination when writing Lilith (in addition to many others such as Dante or Holy Scripture) that add layers of meaning. The first source is Nathanial Hawthorn’s novel The Blithdale Romance[2] and the second source is the historical seventeenth-century figure of Sir Henry Vane[3]. In both instances, there is hand/fist symbolism that complements similar ideas in MacDonald’s story. Those earlier essays offer more evidence about the ways that these sources fed into MacDonald’s writing, but I will limit the connections here in order to focus on the hand/fist imagery.
In The Blithdale Romance, there is a woman that bears a significant resemblance to the character of Lilith. This character, Zenobia, is like Lilith in that they both are figures from Jewish history/folklore. Zenobia was a third-century Jewish Queen known for her beauty, power, intelligence, and ruthlessness. Lilith was allegedly the first wife of Adam. In both novels, the femme-fatal characters die toward the end of the story with clenched fists and a wound under their hearts. Zenobia dies by drowning suicide and Lilith by assisted suicide (if you will) whose death begins when her clenched fist is cut off with a sword.
Here is Hawthorn’s description of Zenobia’s death:
“Her arms had grown rigid in the act of struggling, and were bent before her, with clenched hands; her knees, too, were bent, and – thank God for it! – in the attitude of prayer.” […]
With the last, choking consciousness, bubbling out through her lips, it may be, had given itself up to the Father, reconciled and penitent. But her arms! They were bent before her, as if struggling against Providence in never-ending hostility. Her hands! They were clenched in immitigable hostility. Away with the hideous thought! The flitting moment, after Zenobia sank into the dark pool – when her breath was gone, and her soul at her lips – was as long, in its capacity of God’s infinite forgiveness, as the lifetime of the world.
Foster bent over the body, and carefully examined it.
“You have wounded the poor thing’s breast,” he said to Hollingsworth. “Close by the heart, too!”
“Ha,” cried Hollingsworth, with a start.
And so he had, indeed, both before and after death.”[4] (bold italics mine)
Here is the clenched fist passage from Lilith:
“Lilith,” said Mara, “You will not sleep, if you lie there a thousand years, until you have opened your hand, and yielded that which is not yours to give or withhold.”
“I cannot,” she answered. “I would if I could, and gladly, for I am weary, and the shadows of death are gathering about me.”
“They will gather and gather, but they cannot infold you while yet your hand remains unopened. You may think you are dead, but it will be only a dream; you may think you have come awake, but it will still be only a dream. Open your hand, and you will sleep indeed—then wake indeed.”
“I am trying hard, but the fingers have grown together and into the palm.”
“I pray you put forth the strength of your will. For the love of life, draw together your forces and break its bonds!”
“I have struggled in vain; I can do no more. I am very weary, and sleep lies heavy upon my lids.”
“The moment you open your hand, you will sleep. Open it, and make an end.”[5]
Earlier in Lilith, there is a passage describing a wound under Lilith’s heart inflicted by Mr. Vane when she was in the form of a leopard. The wound in her side, like the closed fist later, are representations of sin which must be removed.
“For her arm lay across her bosom, and her hand was pressed to her side.
A swift pang contorted her beautiful face, and passed.
“It is but a leopard-spot that lingers! it will quickly follow those I have dismissed,” she answered.
“Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art the slave of sin: take thy hand from thy side.”
Her hand sank away, and as it dropt she looked him in the eyes with a quailing fierceness that had in it no surrender.
He gazed a moment at the spot.
“It is not on the leopard; it is in the woman!” he said. “Nor will it leave thee until it hath eaten to thy heart, and thy beauty hath flowed from thee through the open wound!”
She gave a glance downward, and shivered.
“Lilith,” said Adam, and his tone had changed to a tender beseeching, “hear me, and repent, and He who made thee will cleanse thee!”[6] (bold italics mine)
Some commonalities between the figures of the ancient Queen Zenobia and Hawthorne’s Zenobia, or the folklore of Lilith and MacDonald’s Lilith, suggest themselves to me. As mentioned before, all of these women are beautiful, powerful, intelligent, and ruthless. They are all unwilling to surrender. Hawthorne’s character is a 19th century feminist and it may be debated as to whether MacDonald meant Lilith to reflect aspects of feminism, though, as mentioned at the beginning of this essay, he probably did not wish to proffer any final interpretation on the matter because he believed: “The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.”[7]
However, it is safe to say that the fist symbolism for Hawthorn and MacDonald represented “struggling against Providence,” hostility, anger, defiance, and the attempt to possess for the self things which belong to God alone. Conversely, the description of Zenobia in a position of prayer in death, bending the knee, reflects the narrator’s hope that she might have, at the last moment, received “God’s infinite forgiveness.” In MacDonald’s story, willpower alone is not enough for Lilith to open her closed fist and receive the needed release of sin. Only by asking Adam to cut off her hand could Lilith begin to die to herself and enter into a peaceful sleep.
It is at this point where the story of Sir Henry Vane may add something to the imagery of surrender after battle. Here I will draw upon my essay “Mr. Vane’s Pilgrimage to the Promised Land.”
Sir Henry Vane, the Younger, was a 17th century politician who lived during the Great Rebellion in England.[8] As a convert to Puritanism, he traveled to America in 1635 at the age of 22 years old. A graduate of Oxford University and a man of high social rank, he was elected as the first governor of Massachusetts. Like MacDonald after him, Vane championed toleration of a variety of religious beliefs and freedom of conscience. He famously defended Anne Hutcheson against charges of heresy and he was therefore voted out of office, returning to England. Vane promoted civil and religious freedom and his writings are considered to be foundational to constitutional government in America. After Cromwell’s death, Vane was falsely suspected of conspiring to establish a military dictatorship and was beheaded by Charles II in 1662. People in following centuries considered Vane to be a martyr of freedom – as historically and mythically important to Englishmen as George Washington is in the American mythic consciousness.
If Lilith is an anti-utopian novel (and I believe it is), then the MacDonald’s literary reincarnation of Vane as a utopian champion of freedom can be seen as a refutation to the myth of freedom (as described by Thoreau in his essay “Walking”). Self-reliance and individual freedom stands against MacDonald’s plea for death to oneself by surrendering to God. To understand the importance of the theme of the freedom as a myth, read Thoreau’s essay “Walking,” which MacDonald quotes as an epigraph to Lilith. Surrendering so-called freedom was as necessary for Vane as it was for Lilith.
To see how the severing of Lilith’s hand may be tied to Sir Henry Vane requires going back to Vane’s family history. In 1356, there was an ancestor of Sir Henry Vane by the name of Henry Fane (there as a linguistic consonant change that happened over the years, thus the family name “Fane” became “Vane.”) The fact that MacDonald’s first manuscript gave his protagonist the name Fane, which was changed to Vane in the second manuscript, lends further support that MacDonald had this historical figure in mind as he wrote.
In the famous Battle of Poitiers during the hundred years war between the French and English, Henry Fane was a commoner and archer in the English army. Against all odds, the English defeated the French and the French King John II removed his glove to have it presented to the English Prince Edward as a sign of his surrender. The soldiers and archers had a free-for-all trying to obtain the glove in order to bring it to the prince. It was Henry Fane who managed to get the glove and as a reward he was knighted on the spot. This is how, over 300 years, the Vane family rose to prominence.
In honor of this family origin story, the Vane coat of arms includes the image of three gloves. Also, a recurring Christian first name in the family was Neville. So the family motto they chose to include on their coat of arms is “ne vile fano” a Latin derivative of “Neville Fane” – which translates to “bring nothing vile to the temple” (fane being another word for a shrine or temple). This motto and imagery fits with MacDonald’s teaching: nothing vile or evil will be allowed in heaven – it must be purged. In the words of our Lord, “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” (Matthew 5:30).
For me, the images of the clenched fist and the severed hand not only represent the need to give up sin in our lives, but an acknowledgment that God will (and must) do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves.
[1] MacDonald, George. “The Fantastic Imagination.” In A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespere A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespere . London: Sampson, Low, Marston, 1893.
[2] Trexler, Robert. “The Season for the Hawthorn to Blossom.” In Inklings Forever, Volume IV. Upland, Indiana: Taylor University, (2004): pp. 34-40.
[3] Robert Trexler. “Mr. Vane’s Pilgrimage to the Promised Land.” In George MacDonald: Literary Heritage and Heirs. Editor Roderick McGillis, Hamden, CT, Windged Lion Press, (2008): pp. 45-64.
[4] Hawthorne, Nathaniael. The Blithdale Romance.Norton Critical Edition. New York: WW Norton & Company, Inc., (1978): pp 216-217.
[5] MacDonald, George. Lilith, First and Final., Whitehorn, California: Johannesen Publishing , (1994): Chapter 29, p. 344-345.
[6] MacDonald, George. Lilith, First and Final. Whitehorn, California: Johannesen Publishing , (1994): Chapter 29, p. 235.
[7] MacDonald, George. “The Fantastic Imagination.” In A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespere A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespere . London: Sampson, Low, Marston, 1893.
[8] Parnham, David. Sir Henry Vane, Theologian: A Study in Seventeenth Century Religious and Political Discourse. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1997.