Leiden University Student Repository

Groot, Suze de (2021)

Carl Gustav Jung’s Archetypes the Maiden and the Mother in W.B. Yeats’s Irish Fairy Tales

Bachelor thesis | Engelse taal en cultuur (BA)

This BA thesis analyses female figures in Irish fairy tales and folklore as collected by W.B. Yeats to establish how women were represented in these stories. By analysing Carl Gustav Jung’s archetypal literary criticism, this thesis explores archetypes with the focus on the Mother and the Maiden. This thesis gives close readings of several Irish fairy tales that were selected from Yeats’s anthologies with the purpose of examining figures of the Maiden and the Mother that can be found within fairy tales more closely. Both archetypes can be chiefly be found in the passive figures of the daughter and mother, and it is this passivity that makes them into ‘good’ women. Whereas the figure of the stepmother is far from passive, but her aspirations are always associated with her malevolent nature. The passivity of these female characters is not just unique to Yeats’s fairy tales, but can be generally found in other fairy tales and folklore.

Irish Fairy Tales

W.B. Yeats

Carl Gustav Jung

the Maiden archetype

the Mother archetype

Author

Groot, Suze de

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Literature

Supervisors

Liebregts, P.T.M.G.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en