RAHAB: AND THE SHADOWY FEMALE IN VIIB


through two perspective transformations that exclude the Shadow: 1) the
emergence of Golgonooza (and the attendant eating of the fruit of the Tree
of Mystery); and 2) the fabrication of embodied forms. Night VIIb pro-
vides instead two alternative confrontations between the Shadowy Female
and a male which progressively emphasize the Shadow's power. The
Shadowy Female first confronts Orc, a meeting that results in the consoli-
dation of Orc's serpent form and the scattering of the Shadow on the abyss
"a formless indefinite." Her second tryst, this time with Tharmas, is a
consequence of her having absorbed Orc's energy and thereby having
become "indefinite": she acquires from Orc the power to vary her form in
the ongoing war; she uses this power to disguise herself as Enion, and
thereby stay Tharmas in his flight from Urizen (which formed the struc-
tural basis of Night VI).
 Though she identifies herself as "Vala," no such simple identification is
possible. She and Tharmas discuss a garden sequence, parallel to the one
the Shadow of Enitharmon recalls in VIIa, and enact the hiding/searching
dialectic that pervades the whole context of the Spectre/Shadow tryst in
VIIa. Tharmas does not fictionalize the present by using other character
names but recalls his separation from Enion as a moment when she turned
away "Among the apple trees & all the gardens of delight / Swam like a
dream before my eyes I went to seek the steps / Of Enion in the gardens &
the shadows compassd me" (94:2-4). This frightening memory/vision of
pastoral innocence dissolving into surrounding shadows is a version of
what is happening to Tharmas in the narrative proper at this moment, for
he says to the Shadow: "thou & all delight / And life appear & vanish
mocking me with shadows of false hope" (94:8-9). His account thus inter-
sects the sexual division portrayed by the Shadow in VIIa.
 The Shadowy Female responds by shifting Tharmas' attention to the
problem of hiding by making a disguised reference to the dead who are
about to burst out of their tombs by virtue of the tryst between Tharmas
and the Shadowy Female: "The Moon has chambers where the babes of
love lie hid / And whence they never can be brought in all Eternity /
Unless exposed by their vain parents" (94:12-14). Though this information
comes from a female who is consciously "deciev[ing]" Tharmas (93:36), it
yields a radically different view of the "sublime" activities of Los and
Enitharmon late in VIIa. The emergence of the dead, which appears from
the perspective of VIIa to be a "redemptive" swerve in the narrative, is
interpreted by the Shadowy Female as the exposure of the hidden "babes
of love" by their "vain parents." Her words at this point gesture toward the
massive confusion to emerge in VIII, for there the narrator says, "nothing
could restrain the dead in Beulah from descending / Unto Ulros night
tempted by the Shadowy females sweet / Delusive cruelty" (99:19- 21).
These "dead" function as a structural transformation of the "babes of love"
hid in chambers of the Moon (94:12), since Beulah is originally con-
stituted as "a Soft Moony Universe" (5:30), and the appearance of these
"dead" exposes them to the Shadowy Female's cruelty. Her most easily


while in Night VIIb, the
"dead" emerge out of the
direct sexual union of
Orc and the Shadowy
Female and the indirect
union of Tharmas and
the Shadowy Female.
















Tharmas' memory in
Night VIIb reappears in
the present of Night IX
(131:1-6).










The Shadowy Female
construes the actions of
Los and Enitharmon in
Night Vila as negative
reflexes of "vain
parents."


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