The Raven King and Analytic Psycholgy

[Bracton]

Another topic gave me the inspiration for this one.

The Raven King certainly sits comfortably in the English canon, alongside The Green Knight, Merlyn and Gandalf the Grey. Clarke, like Tolkien and there predecessors is giving us something of a mythology for England. The romantic in me wants to see this as a replacement for the mythology the English lost with the repeated invasions, the realist in me thinks it is probably something we never had much of in the first place.

The Raven King is certainly an archtype: an incarnation of a popular and recurring figure which seems to be embedded in our ‘collective unconscious’ (if you go with such ideas). As a character he conjures up a strong emotional response.

I wonder if he could be considered Norrell’s ‘shaddow’. The shadow, is the unconscious, dark side of our nature, that which we see as inferior and/or uncivilized. It often appears in dreams as dark usually negative figure as the same sex as the dreamer. The ego seeks to hide the shadow from the conscious; the conscious/ego (for Jung at least) was analytical, whereas the shadow more intuitive, recessive.

What do you think?

[Doktor Estrella]

I never thought of it that way, but I suppose that in a way he could be...but I think that it is more likely that Childermass represents Norrell's shadow because he is able to be decisive and acts as a conduit through which Norrell can interact/interpret society and its reaction to him.

[Bracton]

Like a lot of my thoughts it was just something that sprang into my head in the early hours of the morning when I should have been asleep or attempting to do something productive. The idea of Childermass as Norrell’s shadow is interesting and as you say he was clearly a crutch to Norrell without whom Norrell has difficulty functioning, so in that respect he was a vital part of Norrell. Aesthetically Childermass sits in the mould of the Raven King well: both dark, with disrupted semi-wild childhoods, survivors and named John.