The Mythology of the Face-lift

Social Research, Spring, 2000 by Wendy Doniger

This variant blames women, as usual, for death and goes on to divide the blame between the foolish young woman and the vindictive old woman (the mother, cited in the beginning, vanishes, leaving the generations on both sides to fight it out); in an attempt to solve the problem of old age, the women inadvertently invent death. The disguised grandmother in this story might lead us to view the story of Red Riding Hood in a new light, not as a conflict between the kindly granny and the wicked old wolf, but as a conflict within granny herself, who has her own big teeth with which to devour her little granddaughter.

Victorian Exchanges

Some of these myths imagine the transposition of not merely the face but the entire head (as in the ancient Indian tale of the transposed heads, told of both women and men [Doniger, 1999, pp. 204-259]), while others, such as the Inuit myth of Kiviok, more precisely target the face as the locus of the transformation. Stories of both types, however, express a deep distrust, sometimes even a terror, of the magic powers that make these transformations possible. This fear was also voiced, in a different key, by nineteenth century Victorian novels that sounded a warning against the science of their time: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus (1818) against galvanism and dissection, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1887) against psychotropic drugs, and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) against blood transfusions and hypnosis. A novella from this period and genre, though French rather than English, Theophile Gautier's 1856 Avatar, is about the transfer of a soul from one body to another, which might just as well be viewed as the transfer of a face from one soul to another:

   Avatar

   Octavius de Saville was in love with Prascovia, the wife of Count Olaf
   Labinski; but she, being chaste, rejected him. Doctor Balthazar
   Cherbonneau, who had studied for many years in India, put Octavius's soul
   in Olaf's body (now referred to as Octavius-Labinski) and the reverse
   (Olaf-de Saville)--each now designated, in the text, by the soul's first
   name and the body's last name. The wife immediately realized that her
   husband had someone else's soul in him, precisely because he lusted after
   her as her husband never did, and she locked him out of the bedroom.
   Olaf-de Saville challenged Octavius-Labinski to a duel. Each one
   experienced a wave of terror as he was about to plunge his sword into the
   body that he had inhabited until the day before, an act that felt like a
   kind of suicide. But since Olaf-de Saville wanted to destroy the body that
   might deceive Prascovia, heedless of the danger to himself he "lunged
   straight in order to reach, through his own body, his rival's soul and
   life." Octavius-Labinski, however, eluded Olaf-de Saville's thrust and
   disarmed him (remarking that Olaf, whose body he wore, was by far the
   better swordsman), but refused to kill him because, he said, "That death,
   even though unreal, would plunge my dear mother into the deepest grief."

      Then Octavius-Labinski said to Olaf-de Saville, "I am going to restore
   your body to you, for Prascovia does not love me. Under the appearance of
   the husband she recognised the lover's soul." They went together to Dr.
   Cherbonneau, who put Olaf's soul back in Olaf's body. But Dr. Cherbonneau
   allowed Octavius's soul to escape, so that Octavius died (or, at least,
   Octavius's body died). Then Cherbonneau made a will, bequeathing all of his
   property to Octavius de Saville, and put his own soul into Octavius's body,
   allowing his own senile body to die. Appearing as Octavius de Saville
   (though, in reality, Balthazar-de Saville), he attended the funeral of Dr.
   Balthazar Cherbonneau. Olaf Labinski returned to his Countess, who at once
   recognized her beloved husband (Gautier, 1856, pp. 1-89).