Chicken Little: The Inside Story (A Jungian ... - Inner City Books

14 Chicken Little: The Inside Story
but does any fit the bill as a potential sex partner? I think not. One
can’t entirely discount the possibility, psychologically, of a demon
lover, 16 but, and more to the point, nowhere in the tablets is there a
shred of evidence that Chicken Little was capable of lust. Of
course, this raises the whole body issue, which I gladly leave to
those more qualified. 17
Personally, I can live with Chicken Little as unmarried, in her
early teens, and the grandmother as her goal. After all, we find the
same motif in Little Red Riding Hood and in Russian fairy tales
(where the grandmother figure, Baba Yaga, is arguably evil). The
natural process of development in women beckons, perhaps
obliges, them to make contact with both positive and negative sides
of the Great Mother. 18 As often as not, along the way, something
hits them on the head. Goodness knows, I have no quarrel with
that. What I question is the skirts. 19
Carbon dating of the tablets places their origin between 5200
and 4800 BC. Authoritative sources point out that skirts were not
even thought of at that time, and in fact were not prevalent until
1805, when to celebrate Napoleon they suddenly appeared everywhere
on the streets of Paris. On this issue I definitely side with
Adam Brillig. After exhaustive research he wrote the following:
The glyph on the Kraznac tablets commonly interpreted as “skirt” is
more accurately translated, at least in this context, as “shit.” I do not
propose this lightly, only to set the record straight. Nothing is more
abhorrent to me than scholarship based on ignorance. Laymen on a
day’s etymological jaunt, all jovial and carefree, more concerned
with self-serving twaddle than the truth, may be forgiven such
gaucheries. Genuine Chickle Schtickers have no excuse. In this light,
my considered opinion is that the phrase “gathered her skirts” is
For similar reasons I cannot take seriously the fatuous theory that Chicken Little
was actually a male transvestite, or at best a not too fastidious cross-dresser.
16 See Marion Woodman, Addiction to Perfection, pp. 135-155.
17 See, for instance, Deldon Anne McNeely, Touching: Body Therapy and Depth
Psychology, and Marion Woodman, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity,
Anorexia Nervosa and the Repressed Feminine.
18 See Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri, The Mother: Archetypal Image in Fairy Tales.
19 See above, p. 10: “Then she gathered her skirts and ran off in all directions.”