Long before Superman, an obscure hero named Everyman entertained medieval audiences as the subject of an English morality play of the Middle Ages. His story was a simple one, as allegories usually are: When Death beckoned him to account for his life before God, Everyman attempted to entice his life-long companions (both animate and inanimate) to accompany him on his journey into the afterlife. After being abandoned by his friends, his wealth, even his five senses, he was left to face death with only his own history of good deeds. The story ends as Everyman is pronounced dead and the inherent moral of the play is conspicuously repeated by the attending physician.

As an allegorical character, Everyman eclipses the function of symbolizing mankind; he doesn't illustrate what could happen to some, but what will happen to all. As useful as this didactic form of education may have once been, however, most of us believed the heyday of the allegory, not to mention the morality play, ended centuries ago.

We were wrong. Fast forward 600 years to the 1994 Oprah Winfrey show theme song: "I'm Every Woman," an anthem made popular by superstar songstress Whitney Houston. You knew it was just a matter of time: Everywoman was born -- a little behind the times, but eager for her place in the limelight.

Oprah freely admits -- with a coy, apologetic smile -- that she believes herself to be "every woman," and most of her viewers have been content to allow Oprah the role of paragon. A majority of women no doubt do admire her ability to have risen to the top of her profession despite our culture's presumed prevalence of racial and gender discrimination. Many more women can assuredly relate to her life-long struggle with her weight. But living up to the role of Everywoman was not to be as glorious as Winfrey might have hoped. Among other impossibilities, Winfrey had just unwittingly forced herself into living an allegory.

"The modern objection to allegory," writes poetry critic John Frederick Nims, "is to its artificiality... [W]hen we force... human characters... into a continuous narrative in which they 'really mean' something else... we are regimenting them into an unnatural order in which [individuals] can no longer be themselves."

Everywoman, like her medieval male counterpart, is assumed by her very existence to lend credence to the plight of the individual in that Everywoman appears to function as the symbol of the individual. There is a difference, however, between symbol and allegory. Symbolism utilizes the whole of one object to represent or suggest the essence of something else, generally an abstraction. The concrete image of a tree can easily symbolize the abstract idea of knowledge without compromising the concrete nature of the tree. As such, the concrete and the abstract work in concert. But the allegorical detail, explains Nims, "exists primarily to stand for something else; the emphasis [being] more on the abstraction than on the thing itself."

Herein lies the inherent problematic nature of the allegorical Everywoman. The focus on the abstraction of any woman, any individual, is, in essence, just another name for the process of stereotyping. Subsequently, Everywoman must eventually pick and choose with which abstractions She will clothe herself: Will She represent most women if she claims to be pro-choice? Will She adequately cover the pains and concerns of most women if she chooses to stand for motherhood? Anti-pornography? Economic equality? Lesbianism? Censorship? Freedom? No, not even an endorsement of the simple pursuit of freedom will fully represent the concerns and desires and biases of all women, everywhere, ad infinitum.

Winfrey might have been wise to consult the case histories of other women who, rather than proclaiming themselves thus, were thrust into the role of symbolizing the 20th-century female populace -- women most aptly described, in retrospect, as "tragic" figures of the decidedly Greek kind. The 20th-century abortion debate, alone, has provided two: Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey), the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case legalizing abortion; and Geraldine Sontoro, the woman depicted after her death -- the result of a botched abortion -- in a well-publicized photograph.

In both cases, these individual women were chosen to stand as symbols of all women denied legal, safe abortions. Conspicuously in both cases, said agenda-pushers making the decision showed a marked indifference and disregard for the individual. Sarah Weddington, who convinced Norma McCorvey to serve as plaintiff in her lawsuit, said this regarding the contrivance of Roe's pseudonym: "I liked 'Jane Roe.' To me the name represented all women, not just one." Last year, when McCorvey denounced her pro-choice affiliation, Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League responded in kind, saying, "...the Roe decision that recognized the woman's right of choice is not about any single individual woman."

Similarly, the Ms. reporter who angered the family of Geraldine Sontoro by publishing her picture without permission, was shown in the PBS film, "My Sister Gerri," admitting that, in making the decision to print the photograph, she deemed it unnecessary to discover the identity of the woman in the picture. To her such information seemed "irrelevant."

The Greeks perceived the inherent and dynamic tension between individual autonomy and communal interests, and two of their gods personified the dichotomy: Apollo, who embodied what was called the principium individuationis -- the concept of the individual; and Dionysius, who represented group revelry (usually brought on with the assistance of alcohol), accomplishing a transcendent Oneness with nature. Both experiences were necessary for Greek society to remain balanced, but the effort toward Oneness, which Friedrich Nietzsche described as "a state of Dionysian intoxication and self-abrogation," is slightly more problematic. While social experiences are rarely sacrificed or diminished by true individuality, the loss of the individual is certainly the result of group attempts to become One or the same; by definition such endeavors require abrogation of the self.

In Greek drama, the Dionysian approach to public life was exhibited by the prominent role of the Chorus, while the number of actors actually performing a spoken script -- the individual characters -- was limited to just two. It was Greek playwright Sophocles who eventually shifted the focus from the Chorus to the individual character; he did so by introducing the "third actor," thus expanding the possibilities for more complex characterization. "This shift of emphasis from mass spectacle to individual characterization," observes Tufts University scholar Peter D. Arnott, "reflects the growing awareness of human personality and motivation."

Apparently, the awareness of the Greeks was lost somewhere between Sophocles and the suffragettes. Twentieth-century feminist theorists have traditionally opted for the Dionysian approach, consistently attempting to capture that sense of "Oneness." In 1924, Annie Kenney documented the Dionysian birth of the feminist movement in Memories of a Militant: "The call was universal. All women were appealed to. Class barriers were broken down; political distinctions swept away; religious differences forgotten. All women were as one."

Perhaps similarly intoxicated by the notion of breaking the barriers of class, politics, and religion, Winfrey donned the proverbial gown of Everywoman, without stopping to realize that the melange of Everywoman could never be accurately depicted by an incredibly wealthy, unmarried, childless woman who hosts her own talk show, employs her own private chef, and can ask decorating tips of Martha Stewart... and expect a polite answer.

Not surprisingly, a small percentage of Winfrey's audience eventually became cognizant of this problem and began to challenge her claim. Reacting to the talk-show host's weight loss (an accomplishment some dismissed as "effortless" and "privileged" due to her use of a personal trainer and private chef) and subsequent self-confident attitude, a small number of disgruntled viewers conscientiously objected. "Your new theme song [and] commercials may tout, 'I'm Every Woman,'" wrote in one viewer, "but please... admit that you're really not..." And Judy Marcum, of Kentucky, wrote a similar letter, stating, "You do not live our lives, so quit pretending you are just ordinary folk." That letter won Marcum an appearance on the show, at which point a bewildered Oprah, still firmly entrenched in the notion that she could represent the whole of her gender, ordinary or not, asked Marcum, "What were you thinking? What did you really want to say to me, Judy?" Marcum could only mumble, "I think I said it."

And yet, all this tugging and yanking at the hem of Everywoman seems to have eventually worn on Winfrey. At the start of her tenth season, she quietly disposed of the '94 theme song, "I'm Every Woman," in favor of Paul Simon's "Ten Years." Then again, perhaps it was simply no longer fashionable to be seen as Everywoman when Oprah, the individual, was due to celebrate a personal milestone.