Tripping with Adam’s first wife
George MacDonald goes through the looking glass first

by Joe Foster

Lilith, by George MacDonald. 1895

There is a long and illustrious cadre of surrealist books written, or at least seemingly so, under the serious influence of some serious drugs. From Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Junky to pretty much anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, Jonathan Carroll, etc. One of the all-time classics in this “genre” would, of course, be Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Stoner kids have, for generations, identified with the trippy trip young Alice takes through Wonderland; talking to disappearing cats, a frantic coked-up rabbit, a mystic caterpillar and his hookah, and a deck of cards coming to life and trying to kill her, it’s all there. Carroll, though, had a mentor, well known a century ago, named George MacDonald. MacDonald’s work transcends reality to such a degree as to make Alice’s journeys seem no more surreal than a walk down Main during tourist season.

C.S. Lewis, W.H. Auden, Madeleine L’Engle, and Mark Twain all considered MacDonald a master at his craft, and his work has influenced countless writers, including J.R.R. Tolkein. All right, I’m finished with the name-dropping. Suffice it to say that this guy is good, and it’s only through the vagaries of pop culture’s short memory that he has slid somewhat into obscurity.

My favorite work by MacDonald is definitely Lilith. The first wife of Adam, and created from the Earth just as Adam was, Lilith left Eden because she was unwilling to be in a submissive position to her male counterpart. (There are plenty of sexual connotations there, let your mind go with them and you’ll be right on track.) Eve, the “Good Wife” came after, created from Adam’s rib, which somehow made her beholden to him. Lilith came to be seen as a demon, while the submissive Eve is seen as the mother of man. Ironically, it was Eve’s one act of assertiveness that busted up Eden and gave all of mankind the stain of original sin. The lesson here: The Church doesn’t like women. We know that of course, but just noticing that the one independent woman in Judeo-Christian history is cast as a demon merely because she insisted on equality is telling of the battle women have fought since the very beginning – if you believe that Eden was really the beginning.

In the story, a man named Mr. Vane (as in weathervane) steps through a looking glass, (that’s right) and enters a world in which he follows a man that looks to be a raven from the front, and a butler from the back, giant moths turn into tiny flying books, ice cold cadavers are nurtured by the blood of the living by turning into giant white slugs, leafless trees dance as skeletons in the moonlight, and tiny children battle giant adults for the right to survive. Through all of this, Mr. Vane is on a quest, protected along the way by the moon, to save his own soul while exploring the concept of original evil and the power of final redemption. Vane yearns for, but is terrified of, the final sleep that he must willingly commit to before he can be allowed to truly live.

Lilith is, obviously, a religious allegory. MacDonald was raised Calvinist but was disgusted with the idea of Predestination. He became a minister, but his sermons were so controversial that he was eventually canned and he became a scholar and writer. Lilith is a fantastic character, as one would expect. She has spent millennia nurturing her hatred and pain, railing against her creator, whom she refuses to acknowledge. This refusal leads, toward the end of the book, to one of my all-time favorite speeches, in which Lilith is refusing to repent, reveling in the power she holds over herself, a power she admirably never loses: “So long as I feel myself what it pleases me to think myself, I care not. I am content to be to myself what I would be. What I choose to seem to myself makes me what I am. My own thought makes me me; my own thought of myself is me. Another shall not make me!”

What a badass. •