The Under-Appreciated Life of Christiana Morgan

  While building the beautiful tower on the marsh, Christiana Morgan envisioned a sanctuary created to nurture love, art, spirituality, and sensuality. Each and every aspect of the building’s architecture has a purpose, whether practical or visionary. One of the more notable symbols seen throughout the tower is the diad, which is shown as two intertwining shapes, symbolizing the unity between man and women. Morgan and her lover, Harry Murry, built the tower together as a physical dedication to their love. The two believed that men and women were perfectly complementary to one another, and that a relationship with the opposite gender was vital to personal fulfillment. Despite being extremely in touch with her own femininity, Morgan still let her success as a “muse” determine her self worth, which eventually led to a downward spiral in her mental health. 

Christiana’s feelings of emptiness led her to Europe, where she had gone to meet with psychologist Carl Jung. Jung was initially a student of Frued, though unlike his teacher, Jung believed that women had deeper, more complex emotions and intellect than they were given credit for. He was especially captivated by Morgan’s ability to vision and connect to what he described as the “collective consciousness.” Her visions mainly centered around nature, and the human connection we have to our world. They also included what many interpret as religious/ mythological imagery, which we can see through her artistic renditions of her mental imaging. Jung saw Christiana’s connection to spirituality as making her the “perfect archetype of woman.” He believed that she was a muse for men, and she stood out from the rest of the phycologists' patients.  

When Gov’s had originally begun construction on the new Alfond Research Center, I remember joking to my family that the school was “gentrifying my favorite jogging path.” Although the building is extraordinarily beautiful, not to mention the home to infinite potential discoveries, I think that the new construction destroys some of the peace and serenity within that area which had originally caught Morgan’s attention. Ms. Slater had talked about how Christiana Morgan would commonly wade naked in the river's water, as she basked in the vast marsh’s beauty. If the murky brown water was not enough to keep anyone from skinny dipping in the river, having a boxy gray building looming over you certainly does not provide the same scenery that had captured Morgan’s admiration. The school has had discussions about converting the tower into some sort of on-campus museum. Although restoring the building and creating a museum would be a better honor to the tower than the state it is in now, I still don’t believe that this would remain true to Morgan’s original visions. As mentioned in class, the tower was only given to the school after sketchy debates between Morgan and Murray, and she had initially intended to leave the marsh-side property to her only born son. Whether the tower is restored or not is not up to my own discretion, however I believe that our school should work harder to honor both Christiana’s legacy, and her old home.