The archetype of the great mother: A Jungian reading of La puerta de los pájaros

Abstract

The writer from Valladolid Gustavo Martín Garzo offers in his novel The door of birds a group of characters that recall some of the most important characters in fairy tales. This article focuses primarily on analysis of two maternal figures. They evoke the classical witches and evil stepmothers. To discover their psychological meaning are used theories about the archetype of de great mother that Carl Gustav Jung presents in The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. However, should take account that the Junguian concept of archetype refers to a unconscious content and, for this reason, it differs from the concept of archetypal image, which refers to a form elaborated by the consciousness. It is clear that the characters of Gustavo Martín Garzo correspond with the second concept because his book was written by a single author at a particular time. On the contrary, the fairy tales were developed over the course of many generations, so they are associated with the collective unconscious. However, The door of birds offers characters very interesting because through their analysis, in addition to discovering the psychological meaning of classical characters, are also discovered in what way appear in contemporary literature the contents that in  distant past they were in inconscient darkness.