Riddles of the Sphinx

When we were planning the central section of this film,

about a mother and child,

we decided to use the voice of the Sphinx as an imaginary narrator-

because the Sphinx represents,

not the voice of truth, not an answering voice,

but its opposite:

a questioning voice, a voice asking a riddle.

The Oedipus myth associates the voice of the Sphinx

with motherhood as mystery and with resistance to patriarchy.

In some ways the Sphinx is the forgotten character in the story of Oedipus.

Everybody knows that Oedipus killed his father and married his mother,

but the part played by the Sphinx is often overlooked.

Oedipus set off for Thebes,

turning away from Corinth, where he'd been brought up by foster parents.

The Sphinx sat perched on a cliff or pillar outside the city gates;

she asked every man who went past a riddle.

If they couldn't answer, she devoured them.

Then she stopped Oedipus when he went past

and when he answered her correctly,

she threw herself down from the pillar and killed herself.

The myth of the Sphinx took on new life after Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt

when the Great Sphinx at Giza was disclosed once again to Western eyes.

The Egyptian Sphinx is male,

but on its blank face, resonant with mystery and with death,

the spectator could project the image of the Greek Sphinx.

Once again the Sphinx could enter popular mythology,

in the image of male fears and male fantasies,

the cannibalistic mother, part bestial, part angelic, indecipherable.

Oedipus is different from other Greek heroes

in that he defeated the monster, not by strength or by bravery,

but simply by intelligence.

In his answer to the riddle,

Oedipus restored the generations to their proper order,

but by doing so he fell into a further trap.

In his own life he disordered them once more

by marrying his own mother.

It's almost as if Oedipus stands for the conscious mind

and the Sphinx for the unconscious.

The riddle confuses and disorders logical categories

and the monster is a hybrid

of human, animal and bird.

But reading between the lines

the myth confirms women's sense of exclusion and suppression.

The Sphinx is outside the city gates,

she challenges the culture of the city,

with its order of kinship and its order of knowledge,

a culture and a political system which assign women a subordinate place.

To the patriarchy, the Sphinx as woman is a threat and a riddle,

but women within patriarchy are faced with a never-ending series

of threats and riddles -

dilemmas which are hard for women to solve,

because the culture within which they must think is not theirs.

We live in a society ruled by the father,

in which the place of the mother is suppressed.

Motherhood and how to live it,

or not to live it,

lies at the roots of the dilemma.

And meanwhile,

the Sphinx can only speak with a voice apart, a voice off.

Time to get ready.

Time to come in.

Things to forget.

Things to lose.

Meal time.

Story time.

Desultory.

Peremptory.

Keeping going-

Keeping looking.

Reading like a book.

Relief.

Things to cook.

Keeping in the background.

Fish-slice.

Domestic labour.

Disheartened.

Burdened.

Keeping calm.

Keeping clean.

Fitting like a glove.

Remorse.

Things to mend.

Losing touch with reality.

Dish-cloth.

Narcissistic love.

Idolise.

Tranquillise.

Losing count.

Losing control.

Shaking like a leaf.

Release.

Things to say.

No time to make amends.

No time for tea.

Time to worry.

No time to hold.

Things to hold.

Things past.

Meal time.

Story time.

Keeping going-

Keeping looking.

Reading like a book.

Things to forget.

Things to lose.

No time lost.

Story time.

Distressed.

Strained.

Nesting.

In the nest.

Comfort.

Effort.

At the breast.

At rest.

Resting.

Take leave.

Take moss.

Be close.

Be clasped and cleft.

Be close.

Nesting.

Acquiesced.

Memory.

Mystery.

Dispossessed.

Depressed.

Trusting.

Make cross.

Make grieve.

Morose.

Subject to conquest.

Object to incest.

Nesting.

From the nest.

Blood.

Brood.

From the breast.

Caressed.

Hurting.

Bleeding.

It was obvious.

It was as obvious as it was oblivious.

Brooding.

It was plain.

Be close.

It was as plain as it was pain.

Make love.

Make grieve.

Marries.

Mother's and another's.

Mysteries.

Nesting.

"If only I hadn't minded," I used to say,

but I did mind very much.

I minded more than very much.

I minded more than I could ever have dared.

Mind the door. Mind the glass.

Mind the fire.

Mind the child.

I never minded the warmth.

I minded the need.

"It was needed to have minded," I used to say,

but was it needed to have minded more than very much?

More than I could ever have dared?

Transformed, I would confide.

I could have cried.

I could have died.

Transformed, to cold from warmth.

The warmth.

It pacified and purified.

The warmth was far within.

Hidden within.

The warmth was deep and far within.

The cold.

In labour.

In hiding.

In the storm.

Sheltered.

Nurtured.

The warmth.

It was inside.

It was in hiding.

The warmth was far within.

Hidden within.

The warmth was in the centre.

In the calm.

The cold.

Underneath.

Beneath.

Beneath the quilt.

Mothering.

Covering.

The warmth.

The cold conceded nothing.

Whoever, frozen, pleaded, it conceded nothing.

The warmth consoled.

The warmth was needed.

The cold.

Transformed.