 
Choose another writer in this calendar:
by name: by birthday from the calendar.
TimeSearch |
|
Jean M(arie) Auel (1936-) - née Untinen |
|
American novelist who gained international fame with her Earth's Children series, sagas about life in the Stone Age Europe and the early tribesmen. Begun in 1980 with The Clan of the Cave Bear, the six-volume series was concluded in 2011. Jean M. Auel's novels are detailed and based on research but they are also colored with a captivating storyline and vivid imagination. By 2010, her prehistoric romances had sold more than 45 million copies in 28 languages. "Clan Gatherings were also a time to reestablish old acquaintances, see relatives from other clans, and exchange gossip and stories that would enliven many a cold winter evening for the next few years. Young people, unable to find mates within their own clan, vied for each other's attention, though matings could only take place if the woman was acceptable to the leader of the young man's clan. It was considered an honor for a young woman to be chosen, especially by a clan of a higher status, although moving away would be traumatic for her and her loved ones left behind." (The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel, New York: Bantam Books, 2011, p. 346; originally published in the United States by Crown Publishers, 1980) Jean Marie Auel was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Neil
S. Untinen, a housepainter, and Martha (Wirtanen) Untinen. Jean Marie
was the second of five children. Upon graduating from Jones Commercial
High School in Chicago, she married Ray Bernard Auel in 1954; they had
five children within six years. As a counterbalance to her daily
household affairs, she became in 1964 an active member of Mensa. Auel's feminine eyes were opened by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). In
1965-66 she was employed as a clerk in Beaverton, Oregon, then as a
circuit board designer (1966-1973), technical writer (1973-74), and
eventually a credit manager (1974-1976). After studies at Portland State University, Oregon and University of Portland, Auel received her M.B.A. in 1976, at the age of forty. In the same year she got the idea for a story about a girl, Ayla, living amongst people who are different from her. (Her name may be derived from a corrupted form of the Finnish first name Aila.) Auel left her well-paying position in a Portland electronics plant and devoted herself entirely to writing. The idea started to grow and after intense research she finished in six months a 450,000 word manuscript. However, dissatisfied with her work, she then borrowed from a library writing guides and wrote several more drafts. During the long creative process, Auel learned ancient hunting methods, tanning methods, how to knapp flint and prepare food from caribou brain. At first she had difficulties to find a publisher
for her novel, especially because she planned to continued the story in
five subsequent instalments. The first edition of the book was
published by Crown - publishers
had eventually realized that Auel's prehistoric romance was a potential
literary sensation and in spite of being a totally unknown author, Auel
received a record advance of $130,000 after an auction was held for the
contract. On Auel's first research trip to Europe the archaeologist Jean-Philippe
Rigaud helped to arrange a visit to Lascaux Cave, famous for its
prehistoric paintings. Her second visit to the cave of Niaux lasted
about six hours. Auel was guided by Dr. Jean Clottes. The 1980s and the 1990s were the golden age of paleofiction. The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980),
the first in the Earth's Children Series, became one
of the major works in the evolution of the genre, which settled as a
part of the feminist literary movement. "A wrote the story I wanted to
read," Auel said in an interview. "I didn't write it for critics or for
a mass audience. To me it's very serious fiction: it's about anventure,
love, danger, fear, loneliness, jealoysy and belonging." ('Sweet Savage Love. Auel's Neanderthal romances are a smash hit' by Gene Lyons, Newsweek, November 18, 1985) An immediate success, Auel's work sold over three million paper-back copies and earned her an American Book Award Nominatiom. The story of self-discovery, "The Ugly Duckling" set in the ancient times, was translated into several languages, among others into Finnish - Auel's grandparents, families Untinen and Virtanen, originated from Finland, Ostrobothnian region, known for its independent and enterprising people. The story is set in what is now the Crimean peninsula during a warmer period of the last Ice Age. An orphaned Cro-Magnon child, Ayla, is adopted by the Neanderthal Clan of the Cave Bear. She grows up in their community, which is ruled by traditions and taboos. Auel pays much attention to Ayla's resourcefulnes. "She was one of the Others; a newer, younger breed, more vital, more dynamic . . . Her brain followed different paths, her full, high forehead that housed forward-thinking frontal lobes gave her an understanding from a different view." (Ibid., p. 147) But the clan considers Ayla a misfit: females must submit to males. Her rebelling against male dominance is punished, and she is forced to leave her hybrid son Durc and to seek her own destiny. "Before dipping in and disturbing the mirrored surface, she leaned over and looked at herself. She studied her features carefully; she didn't seem so ugly this time, but it wasn't herself she was interested in. She wanted to see the face of the Others." (Ibid., p. 449) Nicholas Ruddick argued in Fire in the Stone
(2009) that one of Auel's "most important speculative extrapolations
from the fossil evidence was that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons did not
think alike: that was why their skulls (and brains) differed in shape.
. . . Most significantly, the two Neanderthal sexes had each a
different set of racial memories as a result of the ancient and rigid
division in their society between (dominant) male hunters and
(subordinate) female gatherers. " (The Fire in the Stone: Prehistoric Fiction from Charles Darwin to Jean M. Auel by Nicholas Ruddick, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2009, p. 85) Ayla was a Cro-Magnon, so she was able to learn to hunt. As a blond, blue-eyed woman, Ayla is more
than a typical "Aryan" heroine -
she is a
combination of Tarzan's Jane, Florence Nightingale, Marie Curie, and
Amelia Earhart in the same person. However, many ancient DNA studies
suggest that Cro-Magnons had dark skin. Ayla's intelligence separates
her from
the other tribe members, although physically she is submitted to the
leader of the Clan. In The Valley of Horses (1983) Ayla searches for the Others on the mammoth steppe,
learns the secrets of fire, and is helped by animals.
The parallel plot introduces Ayla's mate Jondalar, a Cro-Magnon man, also tall
and yellow-haired, and his brother Thonolan, who gets killed by Ayla's cave
lion. "The novel's main interest is in the well-told details of
prehistoric life. The brothers' journey introduces a succession of
Stone Age cultures—all female-centered, worshipping a divine "Mother"
in various guises". ('Auel, Jean Marie, née Untinen) by Linda S. Bergmann, in Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers, edited by Lesley Henderson, with preface by Kay Mussell, Chicago and London: St. James Press, 1990, p. 19) The Mammoth Hunters (1985), which sold
1,100,000 copies, presents a triangle drama between Ayla, the
dark-skinned Ranec, and jealous Jondalar. Ayla also finds her first
women friends among the tribe of Mamutoi and learns the customs and
language of the Others, who live in what is now Ukraine. The Plains of Passage (1990) tells of Ayla's journey along with Jondalar through the grasslands of Ice Age Europe to reach a place they can call home; the Great Mother River described in the story is the Danube. Jondalar is captured by man-hating women and rescued by Ayla. In the end of the story Ayla is happily pregnant. Before the story of Ayla continued, readers had to wait 12 years. In the fifth book, The Shelters of Stone (2002), Ayla struggles for her place in Jondalar's tribe, the Zelendonii, in the Vézère valley. "She was a stranger, a disturbing stranger who brought animals and who knew what other threatening foreign ways and outrageous ideas. Would they accept her? What if they didn't? She couldn't go back, her people lived more than a year's travel to the east. Jolandar had promised that he would leave with her if she wanted—or was forced—to go, but that was before he saw everyone, before he was greeted so warmly. How would he feel now?" (The Shelters of Stone, New York: Bantam Dell, 2003, p. 4) The Ninth Cave of the Zelendonii is the rock-shelter of Laugerie-Haute, in the Dordogne, south-central France. Ayla and Jondalar prepare for the formal mating at the Summer Meeting, she faces Jondalar's former lover, Marona, and proves her skills as a healer. The fifth installment was a disappointment for Katherine A. Powers: "It strikes one as being a romance for people who fantasize about going into business -- something with a strong emphasis on crafts and home products and professional conferences. In other words, the spirit of Martha Stewart informs the pages as much as the Great Mother's does." ('Hear Me Roar' by Katherine A. Powers, The Washington Post, May 25, 2002) The 6th and final volume of the Earth's Children, entitled Land of Painted Caves (2011), was a letdown for fans of the series. Auel also planned to write a prehistoric murder mystery. Auel uses the prehistoric setting to explore gender roles, drawing
parallels between cave society and contemporary social structures.
Bernard Gallagher criticized Auel for presenting relations between
the sexes as "a matter of either/or. Either men are dominant or women
are dominant." (quoted in 'The Not-So-Failed Feminism of Jean Auel' by Clyde Wilcox, Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 28, Issue 3, Winter 1994, p. 63)
Ayla is a feminist heroine from the theories of matriarchal prehistory,
but she is not a warlike Amazon, a Wonder Woman, or an Upper
Paleolithic Princess Leia. She is a conciliator and innovator, the
first to ride on a horse and tame a wolf as a domestic animal, she
knows the secrets of the herbs, and she invents a new technique for
making fire by striking iron pyrite onto flint. Although Auel's Stone Age fantasy in many respects
contradict
archaeologists vision of the past, she managed to create a
fictional world, that was believable and made scientific theories more
accessible to the general public. Auel's attempt to impose the
changing social roles of modern women on prehistory was criticized
by Joseph Carroll as "a narcissistic fantasy that makes a false and
sensationalistic use of sociopolitical themes and symbolic images. . .
. Auel's heroine is merely an evocation of Auel's own sense of personal
identity transplanted into a world in which it does not belong—like a
Pomeranian dog or a Persian cat transplanted into a savage wilderness."
('Adaptationist Criteria of Literary Value: Assessing Kurtén's Dance of the Tiger, Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, and Golding's The Inheritors,' in Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature by Joseph Carroll, New York; London: Routledge, 2004, p. 176) Before being miscast in role of Ayla, the
long-limbed Daryl Hannah had played a
replicant and mermaid, and left these kind characters for a
while. "Devotees of John Sayles' witty, literate screenplays will be
disappointed by the reprtee of subtitled grunts, while beneath the
film's apparent plea for tolerance lies the offensive (if quite
possibly true) assumption that tall, tanned Californian blondes
represent the highest form of human life." ('Clan of the Cave Bear, The' by SJo [Sheila Johnston], in Time Out Film Guide, edited by John Pym, London: Time Out, 2004, p. 238)
Auel hated the film. She sued the producers, Jon Peters and Peter
Guber, for making such an inaccurate adaptation of her novel. The film
did poorly at the box office. As a result, plans to adapt Valley of Horses were not realized. In 1988, parents of students attending Berrien Springs High School in Michigan challenged the use of the novel in classroom. Five years later the novel was challenged at Moorpark High School in Sunneyville, California. Parents complained that the novel contained "hardcore graphic sexual content." (Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds by Dawn B. Sova, New York: Facts On File, 2006, pp. 48-49) During her career, Auel has received several awards, including an American Book Award nomination for best first novel and Friends of Literature Award for The Clan of the Cave Bear (1981), Scandinavian Kaleidoscope of Art and Life Award (1982), Golden Plate award (1986), American Academy of Achievement (1986), Silver Trowel Award (1990), National Zoo Award (1990), Waldo award from Waldenbrooks, and Persie Aeard for WIN (both 1990). She has honorary degrees from University of Portland, University of Maine, and Mt. Vernon College. For further reading: The Fire in the Stone: Prehistoric Fiction from Charles Darwin to Jean M. Auel by Nicholas Ruddick (2009); 'Auel, Jean Marie Untinen,' A to Z of American Women Writers by Carol Kort (2007); Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds by Dawn B. Sova (2006); 'Adaptationist Criteria of Literary Value: Assessing Kurtén's Dance of the Tiger, Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, and Golding's The Inheritors', in Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature by Joseph Carroll (2004); 'Hear Me Roar' by Katherine A. Powers, The Washington Post (May 26, 2002); 'Wells, Golding, and Auel: Representing the Neanderthal' by Charles DePaolo, in Science Fiction Studies, Volume 27 (2000); 'The Not-So-Failed Feminism of Jean Auel' by Clyde Wilcox, Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 28, Issue 3 (Winter 1994); 'Auel, Jean Marie, née Untinen) by Linda S. Bergmann, in Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers, edited by Lesley Henderson (1990) - See also: William Golding's The Inheritors (1955), Björn Kurtén's Dance of the Tiger (1978) Selected works:
|
