Dalva: Jim Harrison's “Twin Sister”

Abstract

Engaged in “soul-making,” novelist Jim Harrison experiments in his novel Dalva with developing his feminine side in the service of his art and life by utilizing psychologist James Hillman's post-Jungian ideas. Harrison tells the story in the first person voice of Dalva, a Nebraskan woman of Swedish and Sioux descent. To overcome depression and to thrive, Harrison had to acknowledge a masculinity of greater dimension than he had characterized earlier in his career, when his characters were often called “macho.” The new conception of masculinity is symbolized by locating his lost “twin sister.” Dalva is the outward sign that Harrison found her, thereby extending his understanding of masculinity and revitalizing his life and art.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Harrison

(1984). Sundog, a novel: The story of an American foreman Robert Corvus Strange, as told to Jim Harrison. New York: Washington Square Press.

Harrison

(1988a). Dalva. New York: E. P. Dutton.

Harrison

(1988b). The Art of Fiction CIV. Interview with Jim Fergus. Paris Review, 107, 53–97.

Harrison

(1991). Just before dark: Collected nonfiction by Jim Harrison. Livingston, MT: Clark City Press.

Hillman

(1976). Revisioning psychology. New York: Harper Perennial.

Hillman

(1979). The dream and the underworld. New York: Harper Perennial.

Hillman

(1985). Anima: An anatomy of a personified notion with excerpts from the writings of C. G. Jung. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications.

Moore

(Ed.). (1989). A blue fire: Selected writings by James Hillman. New York: Harper Perennial.

Morgan

T. E.

(1994). Men writing the feminine: Literature, theory, and the question of genders. Albany: State University of New York Press.

10.

Reilly

E. C.

(1996). Jim Harrison. New York: Twayne Publishers.

11.

Roberson

W. H.

(1988). “Macho mistake”: The misrepresentation of Jim Harrison's fiction. Critique, 29, 233–234.

12.

Sexson

(1981). The quest for self in the collected poems of Wallace Stevens. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press.

13.

Yardley

(1971, December 12). Wolf. Washington Post Book World, 4, 38.

14.

Yardley

(1988, March 6). A lonely heart in the heartland. New York Times Book Review, 3.