SOURCE: Billy, Ted. “Dinesen's ‘Ring’: Matrimonial Götterdämmerung.” Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 11, nos. 3-4 (August 1990): 324-31.

In the following essay, Billy analyzes Dinesen's allusions to Norse and Teutonic mythology and Richard Wagner's The Ring cycle in order to provide insight into the feminist themes of “The Ring.”

Strangely enough, feminist critics have not actively promoted the literary reputation of Isak Dinesen (the pen name of Karen Blixen), perhaps because Dinesen eschews ideology in her fiction, restricting her creativity solely to her artistic objectives. Viewing existence as a seriocomic puppet show ruled by manipulative passions and obsessions, she espouses no party line in following the dictates of her metaphysical imagination. Gradually, her reputation as a masterful story-teller has begun to evolve into a belated recognition of Dinesen as one of the major literary artists of the twentieth century. In recent years, one of her less familiar stories has...