Maiden, Mother, and Crone : The Women of The Sandman

By: Maddie Wack

In The Sandman: Master of Dreams Issue #2, the now-named God of Dreams, Morpheus, returns to his kingdom after his imprisonment to find it devastated, his tools lost, and much of his power sapped. At the advice of his servant, Lucien, he summons what Lucien refers to as the “one in three” with three distinct names but the singular pronoun“her.” A single page depicts their appearance.

Your analysis should entail both description/denotation and interpretation/connotation. What do you read? What do you see? How does the thing you read and see implicitly convey ideology/myth?

This page is a minefield of signs, particularly in terms of gender representation. In order to understand the importance of what is conveyed here, it is first necessary to examine what exactly is portrayed (what the signifiers, one could say).

The first frame of the page depicts rapidly swirling dark and light lines with a dark shape in the middle against a blue background. The words “the WITCHING hour” and “and they COME” appear on opposite corners in white lettering against a dark black splotch. The second frame is divided in two horizontally (though still one frame) by by a line of humanoid bones with two skulls on each side.

The upper section displays the faces of three seemingly caucasian women all under one pointed hat with an older woman with one squinted and one bulging eye in the center, an un-wrinkled woman with blond hair on the right side and a plump, dark haired, woman seemingly in between the ages on the left. They appear against a medium blue background and swirling lines surround them. Like the first frame two black splotches appear on opposite corners with the words “The ONE Who is THREE” on one side and “The WE Who are THEY” on the other.

The below image shows those same three faces now distinctly separate and detailed against a black background with the blonde woman now at the bottom and between the other two. This lower image is surrounded on three sides by a border of purple with gold detailing and the faces of two horned creatures. Above the women, in the small cemi-circle of blue below the bones in the same sort of black splotch is written “The HECATEA.”

In this below image the wrinkles, warts, and very long nose and chin of the woman on the left can be clearly seen. The woman on the right is plump with a double chin, broad features, smaller eyes with no visible eyelashes, some wrinkles a slight smile and is covered in a dark hood. The woman in the middle in unwrinkled with smooth skin, plump pink lips, thick eyelashes, and a purple headband.

Now, on to the fun part. What does this all mean? Well, primarily it conveys the triple wicaan goddess the “Maiden, Mother, Crone.” This is explicitely specified later on in this issue when each woman is referred to as such, but it is likely a reader will at least sub-conciously pick up on this reference when first presented with the trio. Within this conveyance is the ideology that all women in their life-cycles take on these three roles and that these are the three things a woman can be.

The words the One who are Three and the We who are They, along with the portrayal of all three faces beneath one hat, connects these three to each other and to women as a whole.

The appearance of the blonde woman in the middle is meant to convey beauty, innocence and temptation-all linked with the idea of a young woman. She has what were considered the most attractive features in western culture at this time. Moreover her blonde hair has been seen to traditionally represent both goodness and desirability while the headband is generally linked to children and therefore innocence.

The woman on the right conveys maternity by being covered up by clothing and stripped of the stereotypical portrayals of feminine desirability in the media (though this is not to say of course that this is tied to geniune attractiveness in real life, only the general ideal portrayal in the media at this time) being left with comfortably neutral features. She has no attributes portrayed by the media as actively distasteful, so she is not to be despised but neither is she to be desired. She is a source of comfort and kindness.

The woman on the left is otherworldly in her existence as the epitome of sterio-typical, media-portrayed ugliness. Her features convey great age, they are the antithesis to delicate, feminine beauty. She inspires revulsion. She is frightening. She is neither a source of comfort nor desire. Her smile can only be one of pleasure at pain. She is an obstacle. She may be sought after for guidance but she is best kept at a distance. She is perhaps the witch of fairytales, signifying the the evil of a woman who is of no service to a patriarchal society.

The acceptance of this myth, in my opinion, problematically seems to take for granted the idea that women are defined by what they are to others and, more specifically, to men. A woman is the object of men’s desires, then their source of comfort and support, then something sought after for wisdom but also to be feared.

Furthermore, the the idealogy of the Maiden, Mother, Crone representing all women is even more meaningful when looked at within context. That context being that these women here are powerful, otherworldly, magic users of some kind. It is later revealed that these three women are the famous trios in the (traditionally defined) myths of many cultures.This is conveyed through their appearance and the words accompanying them: “The WITCHING hour” and “The HECATAE”(Greek goddesses of Magic).

The swirling lines, the dark shape emerging, the dark splotches as backgrounds for words, gives the sense that these women are a chaotic disruption in the world rather than something of it. The pointed hat is a signifier of traditional witchcraft.The gold and purple border signifies opulence, wealth, status, and separation from the main plot and characters all at once. The bones, and in particular, the skulls convey the death and destruction linked with these women. The black background when the women’s faces are up close could convey their ominous and mysterious nature.

Overall, the maiden, mother, crone being signified by these three characters could convey the ideology of the separateness, powerfulness, and dangerousness of women.

On a final note, despite the fact that the different continents and cultures in the human world have been shown throughout these two issues, the fact that all three of these all-powerful (and highly representative) witches are white (along with all other gods we have met so far in the comics) conveys the ideaology of caucasions being above others and of “true” religion being linked solely to traditional western culture.