A few weeks ago, I found myself in the extraordinary position of being in England during the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. As the week swept along, the upset, sadness and love were powerfully present.
A few weeks ago, I found myself in the extraordinary position of being in England during the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. As the week swept along, the upset, sadness and love were powerfully present. London's good-bye to Diana was an intensely moving experience. "She was much loved" sounded like a mantra in the first few days, as people groped to explain all this energy to me and to each other. In the streets, I had the strange sense of a very present Diana, hovering in the London air just above us all. The intense need to express love and loss continued through the week, and continues on, even after the funeral.
I was staying only eight blocks from Diana's official residence, Kensington Palace in Hyde Park, and I went there that first morning, joining the shocked thousands, pulled there as if by magnetic force. A great grief prevailed. The people mulled around, most carrying bouquets with notes attached: "We love you," they read. "You are our Queen of Hearts." "You were the People's Queen. God Bless, Good Night, R.I.P." "GREAT BEAUTY, GREAT LOVE, GREAT SHAME," read one large sign, its paradoxes ringing.
Roses of all kinds and many bouquets, especially white ones, some single flowers and a few stuffed animals made up the mounds of offerings to Diana spread on the royal grounds. Thousands of bouquets were woven into the wrought-iron bars of the gates and fences of the castles and cathedrals, as if the language of flowers, love, and remembrance were trying to permeate the steel of vertical exclusion.
This was an archetypal event in an unusually clear way, touching on our deepest and strongest levels of psychic structure and meaning. And an amazingly wide range of people have used the term "archetypal" to describe this event. Our responses to the loss of Diana seemed as natural as a tidal wave, carried onward by its own power. We were in the grip of something collective, powerfully emotional, with a numinous and essentially unconscious core. It remains for us afterwards to reflect on the nature of this wave that carried us, and ask whether the shore we have landed upon looks any different.
Our sense of what these events mean can only be preliminary at this point. But we can start to ask, What gods were being served by Diana's life, and her sacrifice or death? Diana's story fits no one single archetypal theme, although it does contain clear themes from several, all centered around this part of her funeral reading: "And the greatest of these is love."
Diana as Aphrodite. The main interest in Diana, the center of her stardom, was probably her love life, as Princess and celebrity. The mounds of flowers recalls tributes to Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty. That it "worked" for Elton John to adapt "Good-Bye, Norma Jean" signals the strength of this erotic quality. Besides her beauty, Diana had that quality of ever-renewed virginity, in a shy and aristocratic way, the same way Marilyn Monroe did in her more childlike mode.
Diana as Good Mother. Trained as a kindergarten teacher, Diana seemed to charm and soothe children, often touching and holding them as well. Known as a dedicated mother, she insisted on keeping her young sons with her on state travels, breaking all precedence. She insisted they have contact with the everyday world, and especially guarded her sons' feeling lives, that they not be shut off, as seemed likely in their royal position.
Diana as Wounded Healer. Diana was widely recognized for her work with many charities, functioning with a steady dedication and a one-to-one compassion that was greatly appreciated. She was known for literally touching the "untouchables," especially those with AIDS and leprosy, before it was recognized as "safe." Despite the obvious element of revenge in her public revelation of her problems during her marriage to Prince Charles, her anorexia, bulemia, and her self-mutilation and suicide attempts, the people took her side. Diana allowed her vulnerabilities to be visible, describing them as her avenue of rapport and caring for those she helped. People felt touched in every way by Diana, even thoughand becauseshe was a royal, a "golden child," a princess.
In her death-story especially, there is the theme of Diana, huntress and hunted. The mythic Diana or Artemis turned the ravaging hounds upon the male (turned into stag) who snooped and invaded her realm, as the Princess Diana was said to be hunted to death by the press that "shot" her at every photo opportunity, and often "shooting her down" later as well, placing her in an ugly light. Like the goddess, Diana was a protectress of children and may be said almost to have "midwifed" her younger brother, being in an especially close and caretaking role.
Diana's final resting place, her tomb alone on an island in a lake on the Spencer ancestral grounds, carries a sense of romance and perhaps a hint of the mythical Arthurian Lady of the Lake, with its resonant sense of heroicism, chivalry and high romance. Finally at rest, no longer hounded, inside or out, the People's Princess is laid in a place which feels hauntingly alone.
What really moves this "story" for me is Diana as Queen of Hearts, the title she requested of the public when stripped of her Royal Highness title. It is here that Diana moves from the Princess of Wales, or the People's Princess, to Queen, a full ruler. Diana carries the principle of eros, relatedness, compassion, of motherly, romantic and healing love. Powerfully, in the sacrifice (unconscious) of Diana's life, there has newly risen up the demand for a kingdom based on love and care, the feminine principle or eros or relatedness. Diana's death brought the Royal family up short, wreaking upon it harsh criticism for their lack of feeling at her death, calling up the older issues of their previous rejection of her, the insufficient divorce settlement, the revocation of her title of "Her Royal Highness." The public demanded the royal family change, show FEELING, grief, and that they honor Diana greatly. And they did.
Diana's face was said to have been untouched in the accident. The injury was to her chest, which filled up with blood. In the end, her heart's blood activated the heart of a nation. Diana was brought in, with some conscious intent, to "update" the royal family. The death of Diana made the royal family behave in ways Diana alive had never been able to accomplish. Many minor symbols that most British understoodthe "hurt" and unusually humble Queen addressing the nation, the flying of the Buckingham flag finally at half-mast, the grand service in Westminster Abbey, the applause, sweeping up the aisle (applause in Westminster Abbey!) at brother Earl Spencer's speechall revealed a royal family honoring, at least outwardly, the principle of Eros, in acting related and in paying their respects to Diana, Queen of Hearts. Further, this death made it necessary that the British public itself take on relatedness, the principle of eros; psychologically, they took this "Queen" Diana into themselves, seeing that she was honored properly. Thus spoke the soul of Great Britain!
For all of us in fact, the inner figures the king and queen have to do with the "ruling principles," the central ideas and feelings that run our lives. The princess is the upcoming principle, a specifically feminine one that we all share, one which is emerging. Through the loss of Diana, the world has been shaken into feeling by a strong theme, playing in what is a gathering chorus. It is a rebalancing, found in feminine and feminist work, in Native American spirituality, in the field of ecology and eco-psychology, even within modern physics. It is a reassertion of the principle of eros or relatedness.
We have been living as if separateoddly, violently separated from each other, from animals and plants and the rest of the universe. These millennial times seem to be challenging us to see and hear the way things relate. We can no longer depend exclusively on the ways we "analyse," separate out, exclude, tear things apart. Caught in polemics, we are weirdly wrapped in self-absorbed doubts and self-conscious separations. Eager audience to the paparazzi, we are subject to mere flashes of the picture, isolated bytes of sound. The death of Diana is a tragic and potentially transformative reminder that it is just possible the heart is the real organ of life.
Copyright 1997 Mary Lynn Kittelson. All rights reserved.
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