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Jean M(arie) Auel (1936-) - née Untinen | |
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American novelist who has gained international fame with her Earth's Children series, sagas about prehistoric Europe. Auel's books describe the early tribesmen. Her bestsellers are detailed and based on research but also colored with a captivating storyline and vivid imagination. The Clan of the Cave Bear was filmed in 1985, starring Daryl Hannah. "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." (from The Clan of the Cave Bear, 1980) Jean Marie Auel was born in Chicago, Illinois, as the second of five children. Her father was a housepainter. After high school, she married Ray Bernard Auel in 1954; they had five children. In 1965-66 she worked as a clerk in Beaverton, Oregon, then as a circuit board designer (1966-1973), technical writer (1973-74), and a credit manager (1974-1976). Auel studied at Portland State University, Oregon and University of Portland, receiving 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. She left her work in a Portland electronics plant and devoted herself entirely to writing. The idea started to grow and after two years of intense research the manuscript for a large prehistoric romance was finished. During the writing process, Auel had learned ancient hunting methods, tanning methods, how to knapp flint and prepare food from caribou brain. She had difficulties to find a publisher for her work, especially because she planned to continued the story in five subsequent books. The Clan of the Cave Bear, the first in the Earth's Children Series, appeared in 1980 and became an immediate success. Auel's 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. Auel starts series with a story of survival. An orphaned Cro-Magnon child, Ayla, is adopted by the Neanderthal Clan of the Cave Bear. She grows up in the Neanderthal community, which is ruled by traditions and taboos. "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." (from The Clan of the Cave Bear) Ayla is considered a misfit, and her rebelling against male dominance is punished. However, as a blond, blue-eyed woman she 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. Her intelligence separates her from the other tribe members, although physically she is submitted to the leader of the Neanderthals. Finally she is forced to leave her son and to seek her own destiny. In The Valley of Horses (1983) Ayla searches for the Others, her own race. She learns the secrets of fire, and is helped by animals. The story introduces Ayla's mate Jondalar, a Cro-Magnon man, also tall and yellow-haired. The Mammoth Hunters (1985) 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. In Plains of Passage (1990) Ayla treks with Jondalar through the grasslands of Ice Age Europe to reach a place they can call home. 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. "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?" 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, who wrote in The Washington Post: "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." The series is still not closed... Auel uses the Stone Age setting to explore gender roles, drawing parallels between cave society and contemporary social structures. Ayla is a feminist heroine from the theories of matriarchal prehistory, she hunts with the men, but she is not a warlike Amazon but a conciliator and innovator. She is 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. Auel pays much attention to female resourcefulness, which is a constant source of astonishment and doubt for cave men. The film adaptation of The Clan of the Cave Bear (1985), produced on Canadian exteriors, combined sex, stone-age, and anthropology. It was not so realistic as Quest for Fire (1981), dealing with the problems of primitive men, but far more intelligent than One Million Years BC (1966), starring Raquel Welsh in her famous fur trimmed bikini. The long-limbed, healthy-looking Daryl Hannah as Ayla is a sympathetic pre-historic feminist - before this role, she just had played a replicant, and mermaid, and left these these kind characters for a while. 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: 'Hear Me Roar' by Katherine A. Powers, The Washington Post (May 26, 2002); Contemporary Popular Writers, ed. by David Mote (1997); Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers, ed. by Aruna Vasudevan (1994) - See also: William Golding's The Inheritors, Björn Kurtén - For further information: : Jean M. Auel's - Earth's Children - Jean M. Auel Selected works:
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