Ring of Power: The Abandoned Child, the Authoritarian Father, and the Disempowered Feminine

In this brilliant and provacativew analysis of the dysfunctional family and patriarchal society, popular author and Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen explores the process of enlightenment, empowerment and healing that can be sparked by myth, drama, and metaphor. Drawing on Richard Wagner's enduring, multigenerational Ring Cycle operas, Bolen ezamines our roles in a patriarchal, dysfunctional society. She demonstrates how recognizing ourselves in the stern fathers, disempowered mothers, abandonned children, and brave truth-tellers of powerful cultural myths can uncovered our buried desires, liberate our untapped strengths, and free ourselves from personal and global cycles of destruction and dysfunction. --- from book's back cover

While reading Donington's brilliant analysis of Wagner's Nibelungenring, I often feel that he has a blind spot for women's psychology and experiences. This is most evident in how all the female (as well as some male) characters are generally seen as mere aspects of the central, male psychology of Wotan. My question was, does this blindness come from Donnington, or from Wagner? To answer this question, I went looking for a woman's interpretation of the Ring, and I found Bolen's. In short, Bolen's book shows that Wagner's insight into female psychology goes further than what Donington reveals. Bolen's background is in clinical psychology, and this colours her analysis. Where Donington sees the cast of the Ring as aspects of one single (male) psychology, Bolen sees it as a dysfunctional family ruled by a narcissistic patriarch. In a way she falls into a trap which is very similar to Donington's, as she reduces Wotan to a one-dimensional character whose relevance is only that of the guilty party in the dysfunction of the whole "family". However, the proof of the pudding is whether her analysis rings true, and for me she does shed new light on this story that has been with me for a long time. As an example I will mention what is perhaps the most difficult part of the story to understand at a psychological level, Siegfried's betrayal of Brunhilde. In Bolen's analysis, Siegfried, having been brought up by Mime, has never experienced love, but merely the pretense of love. When he meets Brunhilde, he is therefore unable to understand the depth of emotion that she has for him. While he benefits from her love, he does not understand the degree to which his commitment to her is expected and required, since the only other "love" he has experienced was that of Mime, which contained no commitment at all. This makes Siegfried able to betray. She then compares Siegfried's encounter with the Gibichungs to that of a social climber, noting how Siegfried, like Gunther and Gutrune, stand to gain in social standing by their association. Surrounded by members of a higher social class, to which he want to gain entry, Siegfried now also has the incentive to betray Brunhilde, which he does. To me, this way of looking at the story is refreshingly different from Donington's, yet based on a similar psychological foundations, and in no way in conflict with it. Bolen is not a long-time "Ring-head" (to use her own phrase), the book appears to have been written rather soon after a powerful first encounter with Wagner's work. For instance, she makes a point of Gunther attempting to avert Hagen's murder of Siegfried --- something that I don't believe is in Wagner's text, but which may have been done at the particular Ring production she happened to see. The analysis is based almost entirely on the story and the libretto (and on Donington as well), and makes few references to the music. She does not have Donington's complete mastery of the text, the music and Wagner's biography

I won't launch into an academic review or a precise of the story. Suffice to say that this is a wonderful book. For 30 - something women, particularly who identify with a patriarchal 'Wotan' figure and his defiant daughter (Brunnhilde) who forsakes wealth and power for love, this is a journey with which you will be familiar. And a wonderfully warm insight into what can be acheived by such women should they take some risks and act from their hearts! Many books have been written on the suppression of the feminine in society but this multi faceted gem allows a glimpse of so many layers of understanding in such an accessible way that it is irresistible. A peek at Carl Jung, an introduction to the genius of Wagner, the insights of the mythologies and the interpretation and storytelling genius of Jean Shinoda Bolen. If nothing else, this book is good value! So much in one package - a rare find these days indeed!

Certainly one of Bolen's most essential works. Ring Of Power provides a valuable guide to Wagner's classic Ring Cycle, yet it is Bolen's grasp of the archetypal basis for the mythology that gives the book its power.All creation comes from an archetypal base, and in The Ring, it is the symbolic sacrificing of the Sacred Feminine that drives the entire story. This principle is fundamental to many pieces, including Faust, the Grail legends and even Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In each case, only the restoration of that which has been sacrificed in a Faustian pact can make healing occur. Bolen's genius is never clearer than in this book, and it was pivotal to the concluding sections of my own book, Sirius Moonlight: The Origins Of The Suppression Of The Feminine.I would strongly recommend Ring Of Power, and indeed all of Bolen's works - especially her autobiographical Crossing To Avalon. People who doubt the importance of Thinking Person's Feminism might consider this... 84 years ago Jean Shinoda Bolen would not have been able to vote, own her own house or inherit property from her father. Like every other woman in the highly civilized English-speaking world.My own book is dedicated to the nine million women who were murdered by the Church during the Inquisition, for such heinous crimes as being midwives and healers. Lest we forget. If the patriarchal Valhalla is now burning, all I can say is pass the gasoline. Good job, Jean.

This was the book I was looking for when I first discovered the Ring, probably 15 years or so ago. It is a book for the Ring lover, feminist, and psychologist alike. Although Jean Bolen writes from a psychological, rather than a musical perspective, her understanding adds immeasureably to the experience of the music. And it also adds to our understanding of the story, and the archetypal levels of meaning that underlie any powerful myth. Jean is a natural storyteller. She brings the story of the Rheingold and the Gods to life and into everyday consciousness. From her feminist, Jungian perspective, she describes how the themes of the Ring, though universal, specifically apply to our lives today. In the Rheingold, she talks about the quest for power and its' psychological cost, in the Valkyrie, she discusses the authoritarian father and the repressed feminine, in Siegfried, the hero as adult-child and in Gotterdammerung, how the truth brings an end to the cycle of destructive power. In two particularly moving chapters, she describes what we can do today to free ourselves from the "ring Cycle" and move beyond Valhalla into a Post-Patriarchal world. I would highly recommend this book as an addition to her previous works, "Goddesses in Everywoman" and "Gods in Everyman", but also as a stand-alone, too. It should appeal to a wider audience, in that it will also include music lovers who may be unfamiliar with Jungian-feminist theory but are looking for a richer understanding of the Ring. In addition, it should appeal to people-in-general who are searching for truth-in-story and myth and music as a way out of patriarchal consciousness.