The writer has mentioned earlier that sea is Molleen’s enemy in this story.
The sea and Molleen had in conflict and that was the reason why her husband could not substitute her father position because her husband confronted her about the sea by
kept going to the sea for fishing. There was anxiety that her husband would leave her just like her father and Macdarragh.
From the description above, we can see that the first phase of Molleen’s life journey was the phase of entering the collective unconscious that was projected by
her separation with the Self archetype and sea that became her fear. Her union with her unconscious contents also reveals the ego-conscious fused and become part of her
unconscious.
5. The Transformation
The transformation phase is a phase where there is a complication and in this phase also the climax occurs. The transformation of Molleen’s psyche was marked by
her meeting with the horse that finally named Macdarragh, a person who she really loved.
After experienced so many suffering, she did not believe in happiness. Even after she had a husband, she still could not trust the happiness, she even got more
afraid of it. Just like her mother said: I tried to tell her he was hers, what more was she wanting when she had him
so in her bed as her husband. The love she had with him, rousing a kind of devil in her. She mistrusted happiness. …….Afraid of happiness, she was.
Blind as a herring leaping in the bay, inviting sorrow into her life, so. McBride 2005, 31
Her fear toward happiness was the manifestation of her unconscious that exist to the conscious. This negative consciousness controlled her life, so she could not
believe in anything or anyone any more. But when she met the horse, she felt the same recognition when she met with
her lover, Macdarragh. She became more familiar when the horse showed it affection to her. They were getting closer and closer all the time. They even acted like two
lovers who were in love. The horse had resembled with her former lover who had the same name with it.
A horse is a symbol of power and strength and it has the same function like her father. So horse is also an analogy of her father. Based on the meaning of
symbols, a horse is acting as the mediator between heaven and earth. So Molleen thought that the horse is the mediator between her and her father in heaven. It can be
seen when she met with this horse, she started to get back to her conscious and socialized with her surrounding. Beside that, a horse is also a symbol of never giving
up. So when the horse died, Molleen felt she lost her hope to achieve her happiness in life and finally she ended her life by committing suicide.
In heroic myth, the hero must through so many suffering in order to get his goal. Like in this story, Molleen must suffer first to get her goal. The horse was her
analogy of her final goal, because it represented her father position in her life. She treated it as a human and as substitute of her lover and it also because they had the
same name-Macdarragh-. She felt it was him. She really treated it as a human. When we got to the cottage, Macdarragh stood at the door waiting and my mother brought
him against the dark, covered him and boosted the fire, then kept to him all night. McBride 2005, 237.More than that, she treated it as her lover.
The horse was standing knee high in the water, the sound of the tide riding in and away in minimal wind. My mother was naked, washing Macdarragh. She
poured a bucket of water over his back, rinsing away the line of foaming soap. She dropped the bucket in the water and embraced the horse, kissing its nose,
both woman and horse oblivious that they were being watched. McBride 2005, 238
She believed it was Macdarragh, her former lover who came back for her but in another shape. She convinced herself by saying: you’re like the mute one himself,
with the sounds from the depths of you. McBride 2005, 234 the island women even said that made her believed even more it was her lover Macdarragh. He said he’d
back to you, Molleen Mohr, and if this isn’t himself before us, then I’ve not lived a day. The shape-shifter McBride 2005, 234
The basic reason why she was not happy with her husband was that her husband could not be the substitution to her father position in her life, which is as Self
archetype. Her husband love could not stabilize her psyche, but made it even worst. He confronted her by keep going on to the sea which was Molleen’s biggest fear
because she was afraid that her husband will die in the sea like them who were already dead.
The horse coming had activated her Self archetype in the collective unconscious. It brought back her consciousness to the surface. She experienced
symbolic rebirth once again. She started to act like every normal women. She started to gather with another islander woman and played some game and laughed.
We played a game with him, taking turns, standing in front of him with our backs to him, and he would push us between our shoulder blades with his
great head, propelling us forward. A kind of thrill in the jolt of it that made us laugh and feel both dreamy and giddy. McBride 2005, 236
But every thing happened in the other way around when the horse fell of the cliff and died in the sea. This is the climax of the story where Molleen once again had
to lose her central archetype.
6. Return: Regression to the Collective Unconscious
