Coming Into Maturity

Beyond naivety and infantility.

By Leo Putz (Tyrolean; 1869 - 1940)

You must have heard the story of the Bluebeard — a story of a man who gives his wives everything they wish for under the condition that they never open the ‘forbidden door’.

The opening of the door brings knowledge to a woman. What is behind the door, unveils him, and the naive maiden who looked towards the murderous monster with an admiring gaze—upon gaining knowledge—becomes his nemesis. It is her cunning, her lack of sentimentality and a lack of ‘school girl’s naïveté’ that saves her life — helped of course, by her ability to access the heroic masculine (represented by her brother).

Eventually she obtains all of the Bluebeard’s wealth — not by surrendering to his oppressive fist nor by allowing herself to be deceived by his gifts. The gifts themselves are meant as nothing more but a veil across her eyes so that he can hide his true, murderous and predatory nature from her.

There is however a trait that all the wives share — it is that not a single one of them could resist opening the forbidden door. It points towards a woman’s inherit desire to know — to know herself, her nature, to know the world, to know her power. And it also shows, that the biggest threat to her, is not the knowledge, but the one who forbids her from accessing it — and while he (or she, for women often do this too) may frame it as just ‘for your own good’ or ‘protection’, what they are supposedly protecting you from is your own self and your own nature. And in that, they are castrating you and separating you from your own self, your own creativity, agency and the very life that you want to live. You are supposed to be satisfied with their false gifts, meant as nothing but pacifiers, while you long for the sun, excitement, sex, experience, knowledge, creativity and everything else the God’s garden may offer.

Women often internalise these ideas — they infantilise themselves, they neuter and castrate themselves, projecting false images of naivety or emotional sensitivity. She herself, is not even aware of the murderous rage that lurks beneath nor of the cold, controlling and even vampiric force that her excessive sweetness and sentimentality are a cover for. Such a woman over-endows the imagined masculine, while in actuality she cannot relate to men at all — her default approach towards the world of men is not curiosity and openness but fear and contempt. Incapable of relating to any positive, noble, loving, vulnerable, heroic or generous images of masculinity, she may seek the Bluebeard — a dominant, wealthy, ‘dark triad’, successful man, who still has no heart nor light and ultimately no love to give. He can provide her with the intense, drug-like stimuli that her ‘dead’ body craves — it is a stimuli she is familiar with and challenges her in no way. He is death and the end is usually tragic.

Because of her own infantility and fears, a woman in such a state cannot share of herself or give of herself. She cannot open herself towards love and communion — not from a man and not from another woman, not in a romantic or a friendly context, because she functions on the subconscious assumption of: “To give myself is to lose myself. When I give and open, people leave and go onto more interesting pursuits.” This has her form all her relationship via projected image and identity rather than embodied feeling and authenticity. Projected image is a form of control — because what you are controlling is how others perceive you. You can’t even give them the freedom of their own perceptions and judgement.

Maybe you dream of reaching the state of the late summer/early autumn — ripe, golden, rich, mature, weighted down by your own abundance — and instead you have convinced yourself that it is best to remain eternally in spring, always sprouting, always budding, forever in potential yet never realised. Potential is safe and perfect and it carries no rot of ripe fruit; but it leaves you forever in your mother’s, father’s or even worse, some Bluebeard’s house. The true death is in their house and not in the fruit that blissfully rots while on the ground, knowing that it shall dissolve into roots, to become fruit yet again.

The guide today shall be on how to allow yourself to be ripe, mature, wise, open, generous and loving, but never sentimental and naive.