59 pages • 1-hour read
Anima Rising
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual violence and harassment, rape, incest, graphic violence, physical abuse, death, gender discrimination, mental illness, and emotional abuse.
Recovering Selfhood After Trauma
Judith’s fluctuating and externally-imposed identity rests at the center of Anima Rising. Judith starts the novel amnesiac: She doesn’t know her own name or how she came to be dead in the Danube canal. Encountering this blank slate, Klimt and Wally attempt to give the woman a plausible identity in their world: Klimt names her Judith and sees her lavender skin as a beautiful art object; Wally befriends her as a fellow oddball. In sessions with Freud, hypnosis unlocks Judith’s memories, but the psychotherapist doubts the validity of Judith’s recollections, preventing her from recouping her past self. Instead, Freud diagnoses Judith with penis envy and repressed sexuality, using her to prove his pet theory that “all girls from the lower classes just want to fornicate, even as infants” (122). Emilie critiques the inherent misogyny of Freud’s analysis, which generalizes and thus erases Judith’s lived experience in favor of his assumptions. Even when Judith recollects her sexual trauma at Adam’s hands, Freud doesn’t believe her, insisting that her description of otherworldly life in the Arctic is concealing the truth. Cast as an artistic tool and a generic “girl from the lower classes,” Judith loses autonomy and is unable to fully re-develop her authentic inner life.
Judith’s eventually retrieved memories become the site of a complex dilemma: whether to accept her experiences of the supernatural as real, or to dig for a more rational explanation of her life. Jung takes a more open view than Freud, but he still fixates on finding the truth; for him, scientific accuracy trumps the validity of her proclaimed selfhood. When Judith asks if she’s “insane,” he replies with ambivalence: “you may not be distinguishing between what is real and what is imagined, but […] What matters is your story. The details, real and imagined. Only when I know your entire story can I help find a cure” (255). While Jung values “the details” of the imagery Judith recalls, he assumes that they “matter” mostly as clues to the trauma she endured and needs to be “cured” of. Judith can assert her selfhood, but this is not enough: Only by using an external source of evidence, such as demonstrating Geoff’s transformation into a wolf, can she convince Jung. Even when Jung believes, he wants to define her identity according to his theories of the occult: “from your experience, living in what you call the Underworld, and giving corporeal form to a figure from there, by most definitions, you are a god” (342).
To fully recover her individual self, Judith must reject the many versions of identity imposed on her by figures in her life: Adam’s resurrected corpse bride, Raven’s bird-god protégé, Klimt’s idealized art object, Freud’s repressed victim, and Jung’s deity. Instead, she must reconcile the fantastical elements of her personhood with her innate desires and aspirations. When she finally gains full autonomy, Judith declines becoming a divine being and seeks to create a normal life, free from the violence of her past existence: “I was thinking about becoming a waitress. I like giving food to people. And Geoff loves pastries. Maybe a seamstress” (342). She wants to work, help others, and take care of her dog. She ends the novel by choosing who she will become, and which selfhood she will inhabit.
Objectification and Bodily Autonomy
Gender and autonomy are two integral concepts in Anima Rising, especially in the context of Judith’s character arc. Judith is a “created woman”: After her first death, she is made and remade in the image of several men. She first appears as corpse in the Danube canal that Klimt views as an art object and compares to a sculpture: “There were white lines, finer than a hair, hatching the mottled lavender of her skin, as if some artist had drawn her figure, traced out the contours of her limbs, then erased them. Or, perhaps better, had laid down watercolor on paper threaded with wax” (3). Klimt is right that she is the product of someone else’s work. The woman he dubs Judith is the result of Victor Frankenstein’s scientific experiment: Victor hoped to use Judith to perfect his resurrection process. The lines on her body were made by Adam, who mutilated Judith to mirror his own disfigurement: “Would that I healed like you do, I would not such a monster be. You are still too fair to share my misery, but I will find ways to bring you into the fold” (169). All three men, in different ways, treat her body as a possession that furthers their aims rather than part of her contiguous personhood.
Judith’s deepening understanding of the importance of bodily autonomy grows as she recovers memories of Adam’s abuse and sees the ways the young women models around her are treated as props by male artists. Egon displays his nude sketches of Wally, some featuring humiliating or dehumanizing poses, to anyone with little regard about her feelings about being displayed like this. Oskar Kokoschka desires an Alma Mahler doll, made to the real woman’s exact measurements and meant to be a sex toy. Oskar’s whim reduces his former lover to an object with only one function and evades the question of whether Alma should have a say over how her likeness is used. Wally’s character arc in the story is to come to terms with her exploitative relationship with Egon, and find the strength to stand up for herself. Judith is horrified by the idea of her bodily autonomy being disrespected, which reminds of her of Adam’s abuse: “I would be afraid of becoming like Kokoschka’s doll. Just something a man makes and keeps […] with no will or ambition of my own—like some kind of sex puppet […] I was made to be a sex puppet” (277).
Even in her newly self-aware existence, Judith’s fear almost comes true several times. Walton offers to keep her for her blood; realizing that even a luxurious cage is still a prison, she fights for and wins her freedom. The god Raven attempts to transform her into a deity in his image, but Judith rejects being remade yet again. In the end, Judith and Wally create themselves—literally. After Judith grants Wally immortality, Wally must assume a new identity. Wally asks, “But who will I be?”, and Judith answers, “Anyone you want” (363). Triumphant, they reclaim their status, becoming “created women” that belong solely to themselves.
The Power Dynamic Between Artist and Muse
Anima Rising offers a complex critique of the art world of early 20th century. Being an artist is rife with socioeconomic conflict, as what is financially remunerative is what is most creatively fulfilling. Klimt, a successful painter who achieves fame in Vienna and beyond, earns most of his income from his portraits of wealthy people. However, Klimt’s artistic interest lies in sketching young women who model for him out of economic precarity, often nude. With his playing clients, Klimt must accommodate schedules and whims, currying favor and doing service work. This is why Klimt prefers his models: The young women fawn over him and make themselves sexually available to him. He has the upper hand in the relationship, with the power to pose them however he wants, including in sexually explicit ways. Klimt often takes breaks from sessions with his wealthy clients to sketch his models; during these breaks “he would draw and talk and laugh with them, a master of his domain, comfortable in his skin, a creative animal, not under the scrutiny of a grand lady upon whom his income depended” (42). The power differential allows Klimt’s inner “creative animal” to emerge, connecting money and art directly because the women lack the monetary or social capital to stop him.
The novel demonstrates the potential excesses of this unbalanced power dynamic. While Klimt may exploit his models without facing repercussions, he nevertheless sets and observes boundaries: He pays them well, helps them with rent, does not actively abuse them, and provides for his children. In contrast, the character of Egon is the dark mirror of Klimt—a man who places no such limitations on his desires. Egon is introduced as someone in a potentially incestuous relationship with his sister. When Wally begins modeling for Egon, she is pragmatic that this also means having sex with him, though there is little pleasure in it for her: “he’s quite weak and willowy. It’s usually over quickly, then he’s very thankful and he apologizes a lot and talks about what a loathsome creature he is until he feels like drawing or shagging again” (147). However, Wally is not prepared for the depths of Egon’s depravity. Despite his self-loathing, he forces her into dehumanizing poses, draws her while having sex with her, and freely displays sketches of her naked body to village children. Egon understands the uneven power dynamic in his relationship with Wally, yet he doesn’t change his behavior to be less exploitative. Instead, as he and Wally grow closer, he only becomes more abusive, culminating in his verbal and physical assault in Krumau that leads Judith to choke him.
Judith recognizes the unfairness of the artist and muse dynamic. Klimt rescues her from the canal, but only because he finds her aesthetically compelling: “I’m not sure, if it had been an ugly girl, or a man […] that he wouldn’t have just hurried away to find a police officer” (284). Klimt protects Judith from those pursuing her because he sees her artistic value. His idealization of her is its own form of power play.
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