59 pages • 1-hour read
Anima Rising
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Chapters 13-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, sexual violence and harassment, rape, child sexual abuse, graphic violence, physical abuse, death, gender discrimination, mental illness, and emotional abuse.
Chapter 13 Summary: “The Underworld”
Amsterdam approves Van Beek’s request for a payment increase. Van Beek recruits two men, Tall and Hans, to help him capture Judith. He doesn’t warn them about Geoff, who Van Beek believes can shapeshift from a dog into a wolf. The three men wait outside Klimt’s studio until a tall blonde woman exits. Tall and Hans grab her and chloroform her unconscious. Van Beek drives her to the small room he’s rented in an alley. Tall and Hans drag the girl into the room and notice she’s pregnant, which means that they’ve unknowingly kidnapped Ella instead of Judith. Van Beek leaves and promises to pay them only if the girl is untouched when he returns.
Freud and Judith have another session. Judith remembers Waggis and his electrical experiments, which Freud assumes isn’t a literal memory. Judith assures Freud she and Waggis didn’t have sex, as she thinks Freud projects the penis onto everything. Judith also thinks she can speak all languages. Freud hypnotizes her again and asks about the dark figure she spoke of at the end of the last session. Judith responds as Raven. Raven found Judith in a clamshell and gave her some of his feathers. Judith died four times and visited Raven’s Underworld, where “the Animal People can talk” and people go when they die (160). When Judith returns to the Above, Raven followed her back. Freud asks if Raven has had sex with Judith. Raven scoffs: He has a penis, but doesn’t carry it around. Raven protected Judith, who was hurt and hungry when she came to the Underworld. Sedna, the Sea Wife whom “the People” call Mother (161), fed Judith and taught her to hunt. Raven corroborates Judith’s story of Adam raping and murdering her.
Klimt and Emilie row a boat around Attersea Lake. Klimt finds Mahler’s death shocking, as Mahler was only two years older than Klimt. Klimt once courted Mahler’s young wife, but her stepfather objected to the match because of Klimt’s age. Emilie thinks it’s actually because of Klimt’s syphilis, but Klimt hasn’t had symptoms in years. Emilie promises to care for him if he develops syphilitic paresis. Back in Vienna, Tall almost rapes Ella before Geoff interrupts.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Judith’s Second Resurrection, as Told to Dr. Freud”
Freud asks what happened after Judith returned to the Above the second time. Judith responds.
After her second death, Judith woke inside the crate on the Arctic island after being unconscious for weeks. Adam had killed the Indigenous men there and stole their supplies. He’d also killed the dogs and ate them, feeding the unconscious Judith dog broth. Adam called Judith his wife, which confused her. Seeing the Indigenous men’s furs, Judith realized she knew how to sew them, something Sedna had taught her in the Underworld. Judith realized that Adam had raped her while she was unconscious. He had also cut her face to try to disfigure her, but she’d healed quickly. Spurred on by Raven’s voice in her mind, Judith ran to the highest peak she could reach and began climbing down a cliff. A bear pursued her. Judith took her parka off and swung it at the bear, tricking the animal into grabbing the coat instead of her. She let the parka go, and the bear fell off the cliff. The bear’s back leg hooked Judith’s shoulder, taking her down, too.
Freud asks Judith if she remembered the ship and the Underworld after her second death. She did. Being in the Underworld didn’t feel like death, but like she had traveled somewhere different. Judith brings up Freud’s fear of trains, mimicking his therapeutic technique by insisting that his fear of trains is a fear of the phallus. Freud asks who Raven is. Judith replies that he’s a god. Freud wants to refer her to a colleague in Switzerland.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Geoff the Croissant-Eating Demon Dog of the North”
During Judith’s session, Wally tours Freud’s facility and finds it fascinating, inspiring her to consider becoming a nurse. At the studio, Ella’s mother tells them that Ella is missing. Wally and Judith promise to find her. Ella’s mother knows Klimt is the father of Ella’s baby; he’s promised them a larger apartment when the child is born. Geoff smells Ella’s hat and leads them to the small room in the alley. Judith sends Geoff in to attack Tall and Hans while she and Wally retrieve Ella.
Van Beek telegrams his client that he has Judith. The client replies that an agent will collect Judith in two days. Van Beek returns to find Ella gone and Tall and Hans quaking in fear of Geoff. Wally and Judith drag Ella back to the studio. Wally asks Judith what language she uses to command Geoff, and Judith replies that it’s the language of the People. She promises to tell Wally about it even if it doesn’t make sense.
Freud writes to Carl Jung and asks him to examine Judith, as her “fanciful scenarios” may provide credence for Jung’s theory of “the collective unconscious and the archetypical aspects of consciousness” (187).
Chapter 16 Summary: “Bohemians on a Train”
Judith, Wally, Egon, Gertie, and Anton travel by train to the town of Krumau. Gertie brags about frequently traveling by train, including a trip she took with Egon when she was 12 and he was 16 and they “reenacted” their parents’ honeymoon (188). This disturbs everyone expect Judith. Egon, Gertie, and Anton order strudels, and Wally expresses jealousy over Gertie and Egon’s relationship. Judith comforts her.
In Krumau, they buy wine and groceries. In their large rental house, they drink while Egon sketches Wally. Judith takes Geoff for a walk and meets a boy named Jakob who shows her his pet marmot. Judith realizes Freud is wrong: She doesn’t have penis envy. She returns home and walks in on Wally and Egon having sex in front of a mirror while Egon sketches them and Gertie giving Anton fellatio. Anton invites Judith to join them, but Wally reminds him that Klimt forbids anyone to touch Judith.
The group settles into life in Krumau. Egon and Anton sketch Wally and Gertie in the mornings before painting outside in the afternoons. The village children watch Egon and Anton work, excited by the novelty of seeing them make art live. Some afternoons, the painters do private modeling sessions, and Judith goes to the village. One day, she finds Egon demanding Wally pose naked with her butt in the air. He swears at her and pushes her face into the floor. Judith grabs Egon and chokes him, nearly killing him, until Wally tells her to stop. Judith realizes she’s choked men to death before.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Au Plein Air”
Klimt paints au plein air but struggles to capture the landscape, comparing himself negatively to Monet. Emilie sends a gramophone to Klimt’s studio so that the models can listen to music while posing. Klimt worries the music will distract them, but Emilie encourages him to allow joy into his life.
Egon and Anton treat the women with greater respect after Judith’s attack. Judith remembers that she was once a sex worker in Amsterdam; there, she choked the clients who hurt her, some briefly and some to death. She killed over a dozen in 30 years. Wally is shocked because Judith appears to be about 20 years old. They wonder if Van Beek is a real police officer pursuing Judith as a suspect for the murders. Judith doesn’t want to tell Freud what she’s remembered, since he may turn her in. Wally assures her that the police wouldn’t hang a woman with mental illness.
The artists return with a gaggle of children. Anton drew one of the boys, so the other children want to model too. Geoff plays with the children while Wally and Judith go to the village to obtain more eclairs. They return to find Egon painting 12-year-old Tatiana, who poses with her dress unbuttoned. Judith chokes Egon and demands he stop, but Tatiana begs to stay in the house, showing Wally the welts from where her stepfather beats her. Wally lets her stay but insists she sleep on the divan and always keep her clothes on. Tatiana stays for three nights before a police officer arrives.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Places Ladies, Music, and Begin”
Klimt returns to his studio in Vienna to find four models, including Judith and Ella, posed and masturbating to Strauss’s “Blue Danube” waltz. They do it to thank Klimt for the new gramophone, which Emilie sent with a note ostensibly from him: “To my girls. May it bring joy to all our work. All my love, Gus” (217). As Judith masturbates to orgasm, Klimt notices faint white lines on her body that he hasn’t seen since pulling her from the canal. Only Wally is missing: She is in prison with Egon. In Krumau, police accused Egon of abducting Tatiana and arrested him, but the charges were lowered to exposing children to pornography after the court saw the naked sketches that he showed the children of the village. Egon will spend 30 days in jail. Judith tells Klimt about her recovered memories, Ella’s kidnapping, and Freud’s recommendation that another doctor examine her.
Carl Jung agrees to see Judith when he’s passing through Vienna next month. He recognizes Freud’s description of Raven from folklore and tells Freud about a Danish explorer who compiled the mythology of the Inuit people of Greenland. Jung will read the work before seeing Judith.
Klimt walks to a café to meet Commandant Kruger. During his walk, Klimt wonders if he’s too old to change. He considers whether Judith is a symbol of something. Kruger has found more information on Thiessen. While Kruger talks, Klimt sketches him. Thiessen was investigating a string of murders in Amsterdam that occurred over 30 years; he believed a single sex worker had committed them. Thiessen’s superiors and Kruger believe the theory is implausible. Kruger has also learned that the night of Thiessen’s murder, a workman took home a tall, blonde sex worker. Thiessen and a dog entered the workman’s apartment, leading the woman to jump out the three-story window. They never found the woman, but Kruger adds that someone saw Klimt fish a naked woman out of the canals the same night. Klimt denies it and gives Kruger the sketch to distract him.
Chapters 13-18 Analysis
The novel uses its structure and setting to explore the intersection of time periods. Moore’s narrative layers several time frames over one another: Vienna in 1911, Walton’s description of encountering Victor and Adam in 1799, and Victor’s story of constructing the creature and reanimating Judith decades earlier. Because Judith persists across all of these, the temporal distance of centuries collapses. Adding to the mixture of eras is the collision of the modern world, via technology and culture, with the ancient world of myth and magic. Judith has access to the centuries-old belief system of the Inuit people, but her existence is also marked by the forefront of science and medicine: Victor’s research into reversing death in the 18th century, and Freud and Jung’s theories of the subconscious and use of hypnosis in the 20th. Set a few years before WWI, the novel highlights the juxtaposition of past and future in scenes like the opening of Chapter 9, where cars speed alongside Klimt’s horse-drawn carriage.
Judith’s desire to recover her past leads her to hypnosis, but Freud distrusts her memories, complicating the process of Recovering Selfhood After Trauma. Judith recalls being in the Underworld with the Animal People and the gods Raven and Sedna. However, Freud refuses to accept Judith’s testimony literally, instead interpreting it through the lens of psychoanalysis: “the fantastic imagery of her story I attribute to abuse by an adult relative, perhaps from when she was very young, the memories of which are repressed so deeply that her unconscious has constructed these fanciful scenarios as protection” (186). Freud believes himself intellectually superior to Judith and other women, which prevents him from trying to get to know Judith from her own words. Rather, he imposes meaning onto her, hindering her from reconstructing her identity from her experiences. Freud’s suggestion of “abuse” happens on a piece of reality—Adam did victimize Judith—but this trauma is not the only way to define her.
The trip to Krumau explores The Power Dynamic Between Artist and Muse, especially in the context of Wally’s relationship with Egon. Egon’s sexual and artistic exploitation of Wally forms the basis for his artistic practice. Even while they are having sex, Egon is primarily interested in his creative output rather than pleasure or romance: “Egon, spiderlike, was on top of her, naked but for his socks, trying to draw on a sketch pad on the floor beside Wally’s shoulder while looking at them in the mirror” (197). The word “spiderlike” casts Egon in a predatory light, illustrating his rapacious attitude toward Wally. He uses her body and ignores her inner life. One of the village children compares a sketch of Wally to an animal: “My dog makes that pose when he’s trying to poop” (209). Egon agrees, showing how little he considers Wally’s feelings and how easy it is for him to dehumanize her: “Yes […] You see the pure, base animalness of our nature” (209). Underscoring the point, Egon often portrays Wally as a body without a head, as Judith notes: “You can’t even see your face in that one” (209). To Egon, Wally is a faceless entity to exploit. Wally becomes attracted to Egon; he humiliates her frequently.
In contrast, Klimt begins questioning his relationship to his models, especially after he returns from Attersea Lake to find them masturbating together. Klimt is “thrown” by the sight, even though he has “built his worldwide reputation on merging sex with art” (225). The reason he is uncomfortable is that he outside the scene’s power structure: Whereas in his art, he poses women in masturbatory positions himself, here, they have assumed agency in staging their orgiastic display. While still performing for him, the women are also pursuing their own pleasure (as evidenced by Judith’s orgasm)—something Klimt does not consider when they model. Klimt realizes that his more delicate and less objectifying treatment of Judith has caused the shift in dynamic: “And who could he blame but himself? He had found the dead girl in the canal […] saw to it that she was cared for, mind and body, and why? Because she represented risk? Danger? Beauty? Sex? Compassion? Responsibility? Death?” (225). Klimt wonders why he feels the impulse to protect Judith instead of exploiting her like his does the other young women in his life. Judith serves as a turning point, inspiring Klimt to interrogate his ideas of sex, art, and power.
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