The Crone's Tale (Or One of Them Anyway)

I've been thinking a lot about archetypes lately. Particularly, about crones.

In the Disney version of things, crones are divided between good crones, fairy godmothers who grant wishes while asking little or nothing in return for their favors, and bad crones, usually evil old hags or other disenfranchised women who are pissed off at the world and want to make everyone else pay for their unhappiness. 

 

Things get more nuanced in traditional tales. Although myths and fairy tales have been written down and held to more specific plots in recent times, the farther back you go in time, to when stories were primarily an oral tradition, the more fluid the stories and characters become, neither wholly good or bad.  But in any particular story, the old woman still plays a specific role that doesn't care anything about her as an individual.  The reader/listener is never told the Crone's own perspective on the events that are unfolding.

Crones, when they appear in stories, are not the main character. They are there as a lesson, or a mentor, a challenge or a help, to the younger more important character. The complexities, stories, needs, faults, or desires of the crone are rarely mentioned or deemed important to the story. Mother archetypes, entangled in the story of a heroine or maiden, mothers still get some motives (good ones or bad ones), but crones are considered background material.  No one thinks to stop and ask why the queen is evil? Wonders why the witch lives alone?  Did their stories once hold abuse? Love? Travel? An unforgettable choice? Were they once the heroine of the tale?

I think of Baba Yaga. Standard thought is that she's an evil witch in the woods. But something inside me has always both identified with her and thinks she's somehow gotten a bad rap. Like the wild woman, like the aforementioned disenfranchised woman (because of age or income or skin color or what have you), like Mother Nature herself, she doesn't go out looking to ruin someone elses life, she is simply minding her own business in the woods, or of the woods, while other people label her as the antagonist.

 

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, there are a number of witches, the two most recurring crone witches being Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax. With Nanny Ogg's huge rambling family tree, you'd think I'd primarily relate to her but for some reason, I always read her as a character outside my head. Granny Weatherwax on the other hand, I read as if I am her character. Despite her spinster life, she is the person I can relate to most. It's odd, because I don't think I appear like her when I interact with others, and yet inside she fits.

As a older woman myself, I have mixed feelings about all these versions of the Crone. Because I am older, and therefore blessed with a wider view of life's journey (to date), part of me doesn't really give a shit any more what others think of me. If I'm certain I've done no intentional harm, if my plaid skirt clashes with my floral socks, if my tea cup is chipped but beloved, then it's nothing anyone has a say in but myself. But no one, of any age, likes to be marginalized, likes to be portrayed as a stereotype more than an archetype, likes to be burdened with not only ones own legitimate expectations, but the expectations others have laid on us as well. The shoulds and the musts, the assumptions, fears, hopes, and tints of other's needs and wants that blur who you really are as a person separate from who you are to someone else.

Maidens and Mothers are also burdened under their own stereotypes. Men too - Youth, Father/Warrior, Sage perhaps? Crones, however, don't seem to get the same amount of press these days. Ageism is still a thing, and it seems to be a thing that's been put on the back burner while other battles are being fought. We all battle our culture's pattern of constricting and defining roles in society. We all want to be acknowledged,  we all deserve to be acknowledged.  Some times it feels as if Crones are expected to understand that it's not their time, can they please just take a seat because, you know, other people are waiting for their turn....

Some examples? Young actresses are not only allowed, but expected to be all sexy eye candy. Older actresses are told to tuck those saggy boobs out of sight, or better yet, fix them so we can pretend you aren't old yet. Older male politicians are typically construed as wise and experienced, older female politicians are bitches who don't know what they are talking about - pat pat pat their coiffed heads. Crones are often invisible in public, assumed to be good at making apple pies but probably not good at understanding pi. An older man is a retired something.  An older woman is... an older woman.  Oh?  You did things beside being female?!

On a personal level, I juggle my identity as Crone. I do like to putter in my garden. I make a mean apple pie. I am a grandmother. I embrace (or embarrassingly own) many of the stereotypes of an older woman. And yet at any moment I might just as easily set the stereotype on fire and dance around the flames gleefully nonconformist. And, as mentioning above, not giving a shit.  I don't want to apologize for those stereotype aspects I happen to fit, I shouldn't have to explain the lack of those stereotype aspects I am not even interested in caring about. 

Art by Autumn Skye Morrison

To further complicate things, as we walk our path through time, we don't completely shed the person we were at the beginning of the journey, or the middle of the journey. We carry those parts of us packed into our rucksack of memories. The Maiden is still alive inside of me, still going off on adventures, blithely, stubbornly unaware, wandering to grandmother's house (and of course cleverly outwitting the wolf). I'm still the Mother, both blessed and burdened by the weaving of souls, a Mother's focus still influences my interactions and choices.

Beyond the stereotype, I find the archetype itself to be a a mixture of garments.  I can put on the sparkly tiara or the grandmotherly shawl. I am the wise, understanding and all giving fairy godmother who cares about others because I understand the path is confusing and frightening and difficult at times.  But other days I sympathize with the evil queen, with the Baba Yaga, both frustrated at having to deal over and over again with the ineptitude of others, roped into interacting with story characters who refuse to take responsibility for the task to "know thyself".  More and more I see the appeal of disappearing into the dark woods, to become the hermit witch in her forest green dress and her midnight black hat, feared just enough to keep all but the most truehearted well away from her small chicken footed cottage.

 

It's annoying to be a stereotype.  It's exhausting to be an archetype.  It's confusing to be a real person whose story doesn't fit neatly into either.   What I want, what we all want of course, is to feel the sum of our parts.  I want to embrace the dark and honor the light, I want be balanced between them, each valid and worthy in their roles. I want to mix it up.  I want to be an evil godmother and a good witch, a foolish grandmother or a distracted scholar, whatever the day calls for. Instead of having all my parts spinning atop different poles, me racing to keep them all twirling, I want them all clustered together comfortable, a big china cabinet of me (or toy box of me, or wardrobe of me...), each part pulled out as needed, and returned to the whole when done.  I'm tired of keeping things separate and spinning.  

Of course, we all want this, right? Maybe it's just hard to find enough time to worry about it until we reach our later years. Maybe it takes decades of spinning those damn poles before we realize it's too much work.  We don't have to do a huge song and dance shtick to explain our story to others. We just want to be our whole, unapologetic, patchwork self.  Broomstick, tiara, glitter, warts, and all.