The Destruction of Jessica Atreides — Part 1
I have a theory that the Dune franchise is really about the Bene Gesserit. With their Other Memory the Reverend Mothers represent the closest thing to a species-level awareness, showing the best and worst of our human potential. That is a longer post for another time, but if the Bene Gesserit are the most up-to-date versions of human consciousness, then in the first and most famous book Dune both Revered Mother Helen Gais Mohaim and Bene Gesserit acolyte turned rogue Reverend Mother Jessica Atreides represent two sides of the same coin of human failure — Jessica in misguided love, and Moahim in greed and lust for power. We’ll talk about the old Truthsayer witch Mohaim in that later post as well, but this is about The Destruction of Jessica Atreides, and how both the Bene Gesserit paths she followed as well as the paths she ignored both led to the cataclysmic political explosion of the Dune series and everything that followed. If securing humanity’s eternal existence is the goal of the various power players throughout the Dune series, then the Lady Jessica Atreides can be seen as the true antagonist of the entire franchise, and an embodiment of the early failures of the Bene Gesserit in every way, her actions frequently leading to the near end of the Golden Path before it even begins.
Dune opens with a dialogue between the Lady Jessica and her mentor Reverend Mother Mohaim on Caladan. Caladan is the Atreides seat of power and a near perfect eden of a world which is apparently not enough for Jessica. One of the bene gesserit’s main powers is through the control of their “breeding program” where they smash together “good stock” of individuals to try and create tools for their political needs or even humans with supernatural abilities. Jessica, the bastard daughter of most malevolent actor in the first two books and sworn enemy of the Atreides, Baron Vladamir Harkonnen, disregards her ‘breeding program’ orders to bear a daughter and instead bears a son (something they can apparently control) due to the ask from and the love she felt for her Duke Leto Atreides. Although she did not know her lineage during this encounter, Reverend Mother Mohaim imbued Jessica with the same power hungry drive and comforting feeling of ‘rightness of action’ that was the undercurrent of all Bene Gesserit actions during this era. Jessica hoping for her own manifest destiny wanted to produce the Kwizatz Hadderach, the male equivalent of the Bene Gesserit who can look down his male and female pasts to reach heights unknown, thinking it will serve both her and the Bene Gesserit’s interests.
This simmering lust for power of course produces Paul Atreides, brought up lied to about the reasons for his teachings, but trained in all of the ways Jessica could fathom to prepare him to become that figure — as a mentat, in the weirding way of fighting, in the highest levels of politics, with prana bindu training to the point where he could control every individual muscle in his body, and more, and more.
As Dune unfolds and the Atreides are betrayed, Paul and Jessica escape to the desert. Always the Bene Gesserit, Jessica realizes slowly that the Fremen’s beliefs down to the very core of their religion was implanted by the Missionaria Protectiva, the Bene Gesserit missionaries who implant religions on planets with certain flavors of myths and certain ways of deification that can be exploited later for their own ends, potentially hundreds if not thousands of years in the future. Without concern for the Fremen, Jessica wields these myths to gain favor and power for herself and her son among them. She exploits myths of, fakes divine authority, and subjugates the population until they will do her bidding by choice, awed by her powers first and later her sons. She does this not in the name of a Just cause, or helping the local population escape from brutal treatment, or to integrate with them to escape her own enemies into a life of seclusion, no she does it to be able to return as quickly to the universal seat of power, planning to outcast the people who saved and believed in her at the first opportunity. She thinks of Dune as a hell hole and is she glad the missionaria protectiva provided this outlet for her.
But the religious fervor she creates becomes more than she bargained for however, and her pride and goals prevented her from seeing what she was creating. She does this so effectively that Paul, her son who’s powers of prescience were just beginning to awaken due to the spice-rich environment of Dune and food of the Fremen, begins to think of her as the enemy. Unlike Jessica he can see the power of the Fremen people, and catches glimpses of an insane Jihad expanding out through the universe, killing billions and destroying planets. Paul is severely shocked by his vision, and tries his best to avoid the paths that lead to that destruction. Jessica without presceince or sense of what she is causing at all, continues to whip up the Fremen for their own ends, making Paul realize that in his effort to stem the future Jihad Jessica his mother is his enemy in that task.
As Paul is considering the possible futures during their several year stint living with the Fremen among the Dunes, Jessica goes through the spice agony to become a full fledged Reverend Mother. Her desire to be more powerful is great enough to not even consider the impact on her unborn daughter, who becomes a preborn reverend mother herself and is born with the collective memory of the entire ancestral chain of the Fremen reverend mothers, seeing atrocities we could only fathom before she had ever opened her eyes, atrocities that led the core Fremen mantra to literally be “never to forgive, never to forget.” She realizes only too late what she “did it to my poor unformed daughter….exposed to realities without any defenses,” to me there is no chance she could have not considered that, and ironically her lack of inbred love from the Harkonnen blood line may be the clue to why. As Alia grows she is a tribal outcast save for a few close familial members, saying “I know I’m a freak” and living a life in constant pain.
Over time and the quiet places of the Sietch where she lives, catalyzed by the return and confrontation with Gurney Halleck who mistakenly thinks her the original betrayer, she realizes in a moment of emotional honesty just what she had been doing for years to Paul, now Muad’dib and religious leader among the Fremen — “suddenly sees how I’ve used you, and twisted you, and manipulated you to set you on a course of my choosing. A course I had to choose if thats any excuse, because of my own training. Paul, I want you to do something for me. Choose the course of happiness. Your desert woman, marry her if thats your wish. Defy everyone and everything to do this!…” But it was too late, and the confrontation between Muad’dib led Fremen and the Emperor inched ever closer.
As the conflict escalates and her daughter Alia, now a toddler, is captured by the invading Emperor Shaddam IV, Reverend Mother Helen Mohaim the Emperors truthsayer re-emerges in this scene, and seeing just what Alia is, confronts her in their shared Other Memory decries that Jessica should get a “punishment worse than death” for what she has produced, an abomination and one of the highest crimes of the Bene Gesserit, confirming for us that Jessica should not have been ignorant in her creation of Alia.
At the moment of triumph where Paul Atreides takes over as Emperor of the universe, Jessica pats herself on the back and leaves to Caladan, making Paul promise her sanctuary is the one place that will remain untouched by the brutal Jihad she created and helped unleash. In awe of her son she leaves her family, leaves her daughter to the brutalities of her mind, and only returns later to make things worse in Children of Dune. If the catalyst for her initial actions was Love for her Duke driven by the under girding power lust of Bene Gesserit training, her final actions in Dune are one of cowardice, running away from the destruction she unleashed throughout the universe.
We will talk about her return to finally reap what she had sown in Part 2.