The Prequel Feminism - Page 2
© Paul F. McDonald
Virginia Woolfe once made the famous statement that "As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world." This is the slow realization that comes to Amidala, who decides to return to Naboo. As Woolfe noted, one of the problems that all the disenfranchised face is that even if they win equality, if the system they win equality in is hypocritical and corrupt, it does no one any good. It is with this awakening that the young queen tells Senator Palpatine that the Senate is his arena. She then goes home and discovers not a broader base of politics, but of humanity.
Amidala's salvation does not lie in masculine-dominated heirarchy, but rather in what Woolfe called the Outsider's Society. This group is made up not of citizens but individuals, ones who are not cogs in a larger machine but rather valued for their own unique contributions and insights. Qui-Gon Jinn, the misfit Jedi, Jar Jar Binks, the outcast Gungan, Anakin, the slave boy, and Amidala, the exiled queen, all compose such a group, and it is their own individual instincts and intuitions that allow them to triumph over the strict rationalism and materialism of the Trade Federation.
Much of Amidala's journey can be interpreted in terms of Indian mythology, one that easily lends itself to feminine sensibilities. In this mythic system, all energy and power derive from the Sanskrit word "shakti," which is the essence of the female divine (there is actually a woman Jedi in Attack of the Clones who is named Shaak Ti). In Hindu mythology, all duality in the phenomenal world is "maya," an illusion. Beyond the world of appearances is the one, the Self, that only looks as if it's splitting itself up. This can obviously be read in terms of Amidala's coming of age.
It is not until she goes to seek the help of the Gungans - an amphibious race living on Naboo that her own people have been estranged from for some time - that she is able to bring her alienated halves together and finally become Padme Amidala. With her divided mind healed, she likewise unites the Naboo and the Gungans, continuing the idea of symbiotic relationships and two becoming one. This likewise evokes what James Joyce once said about women, noting they acted as "the link between."
