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Page 1: Ethnic Women Writers II "Of Dwelling Places" || Tradition and Independence in Jewish Feminist Novels

Tradition and Independence in Jewish Feminist NovelsAuthor(s): Evelyn Gross AverySource: MELUS, Vol. 7, No. 4, Ethnic Women Writers II "Of Dwelling Places" (Winter, 1980),pp. 49-55Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for the Study of the Multi-EthnicLiterature of the United States (MELUS)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/467167 .

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Page 2: Ethnic Women Writers II "Of Dwelling Places" || Tradition and Independence in Jewish Feminist Novels

Tradition and Independence in Jewish Feminist Novels

Evelyn Gross Avery

More than fifty years ago, Anzia Yezierska, a struggling immigrant writer, depicted the anguish of poor Jewish women, triply burdened by heritage, gender, and class. In her best novel, Bread Givers (1925), Yezierska pas- sionately portrays the trials of Sara Smolinsky who battles an environment more impoverished, sexist, and tyrannical than most contemporary hero- ines confront. Determined to survive with dignity, Sara acquires an educa- tion, career, and husband, and finally achieves partial reconciliation with her authoritarian father. Such resolutions, however, have been rare in

Jewish-American novels. In fact, before the seventies, Jewish women writing fiction generally neglected Yezierska's concerns. Memorable stories such as Tillie Olsen's "Tell Me a Riddle" and Grace Paley's "Faith" tales poig- nantly reveal feminine predicaments, but they were not representative of the literature.

As Sarah Blacher Cohen points out, not until "the revival of feminism in the late sixties" did Jewish feminist authors emerge. Suddenly a spate of novels by writers such as Sue Kaufman, Gail Parent, Ann Roiphe, and Erica Jong appeared in New York Times book reviews and on best seller lists.

Flippant in tone, middle class in setting, novels such as Diary of a Mad

Housewife, Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York, and Falling Bodies lack the intensity and purpose of Yezierska's work, but their message is also serious. Beneath the glibness and bravado are confused Jewish women uncertain of their roles and goals. Where Sara Smolinsky determinedly combined marriage and career, these protagonists, bereft of tradition and love, drift towards isolation, insanity, and suicide. Because the conven- tional panaceas, husband, home, and even profession, seem unavailable or

unsatisfying, the Jewish women become bitter, assailing men and their

heritage. But at least three recent novels, which I will analyze in this article, attempt to transcend anger. In Ann Roiphe's Long Division, Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, and Susan Fromberg Schaeffer's Falling, the heroines even-

tually acknowledge their Judaism, comprehend their predicament, and seek positive solutions. While Long Division and Fear of Flying are light

MELUS, Volume 7, No. 4, Winter 1980.

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satire, Falling is a serious, complex, and in its resolutions, more satisfying work.

The similarities among these works are obvious. Each novel traces the

physical and psychological journey of an insecure, self-destructive third

generation Jewish-American woman. Terrified of living, she blames her

inadequacies on family and heritage. Even the titles suggest disintegration. Long Division refers to Emily Brimberg Johnson's impending divorce, the division within herself, her alienation from her daughter, and her determination to leave her past. It also applies to the cultural chasm between the self-consciously Jewish Emily and the WASP America she encounters. Fear of Flying aptly describes Isadora Wing's uncertain voyage toward self-

acceptance and self-sufficiency. The process involves both sexual and emo- tional liberation which permits Isadora to "fly" in all senses of the word.

Despite its title, Falling is the most optimistic, the most Jewish, and ulti-

mately the least bitter of the three novels. In the course of falling apart, Elizabeth Kamen's life falls into place, and her personality is integrated. Falling is a novel of reconciliation between the generations and the sexes.2

At the outset the three heroines resemble each other. In their late twenties and early thirties, they are Jewish but choose Gentiles, often doctors, as lovers and husbands. In all three cases the relationships fail, and the pro- tagonists run away. Long Division opens with Emily Brimberg Johnson, a New Yorker in her mid-thirties, driving with her daughter Sarah to Mexico for a quickie divorce. The object of separation is her husband Alexander who requires the admiration and sexual favors of the multitudes. Cold and

imperious, an alcoholic who is alternately morose and manic, Alex has given Emily an inferiority complex and a bratty, demanding ten-year-old daughter.

As in the other two novels, most of the heroine's problems stem from her ambivalence about her Jewish background. Raised by immigrant grand- parents after her parents had died in a car accident, Emily vividly recalls her Sunday school emphasizing inquisitions, pogroms, the Holocaust, the

pain and suffering bequeathed to all Jews. At some point, she consciously rejected this heritage. Not only did she refuse religious instruction, but she "planned an escape - a painless genocide, a pleasure-filled life that . . . would hold no persecution. Marry out - each little Jewish girl had an obli-

gation to marry out."3 Unfortunately, Emily overlooked the inherent dan-

ger - in "marrying out" one risked marrying the enemy, an anti-Semite intent on tormenting his mate. With hindsight she realizes that "Alex was in some ways like a storm trooper, and she, Jewish maiden, thrilled by his alien nature, could never get over the fact that she was under the sheets with the enemy" (p. 130). In choosing Alex she tries to distance herself from the weak Jewish men, praying and swaying while their wives were raped, their children butchered.

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Emily's desire to protect herself and her daughter is doomed to failure.

Fleeing New York, her "Nazi" husband, and her Jewish past, she makes the same mistakes, by seeking salvation in the American dream. Confused and rebellious, she learns through a series of painful adventures that she has sold her heritage for a shoddy, commercial, overrated package. A trip to

Hershey Park, for example, results in Sarah nearly drowning in a vat of excrement-colored chocolate, while the crowd, described as "crucifiers of

Jewish children," looks silently on. Later, at a Christian revival, Emily is distressed when Sarah sings and claps joyfully for Jesus. What had gone wrong? she wonders. "No God had been intended for Sarah, no religion for the child of an Episcopalian painter and a Jewish renegade. [She] was to be the child of the future, the gold at the bottom of the melting pot" (p. 40). It will take Emily many more experiences before she discovers what the reader has known from the beginning. "Marrying out" invites psychological and possibly physical destruction.

If Emily's crises were not so painful, they would be laughable. But author Ann Roiphe clearly uses farce to portray a bleak picture of American life and values. Determined to banish her grandmother's shtetl mentality and become liberated, Emily seduces a WASP dentist. Not only is this all- American male impotent, but he blames his problems on her bad breath. Grandmother was right - in the eyes of America, Jews will always stink. But Emily doesn't give up. Drawn to an Indian reservation, "the cradle of real culture" in her fantasies, she searches for tall, proud warriors who will

vanquish memories of stooped, overly-intellectual, passive Jews. Instead she finds broken televisions, washing machines, plastic crosses, and dirty brown diapers, one of which she is left holding.

Exhausted, Emily seeks peace at a senior citizens' trailer park where she and her daughter bask temporarily in the affection of the elderly. But unlike her immigrant grandparents, these people have no roots, no traditions, no vitality. Their children have deserted them, just as the older people have abandoned their past for plastic, antiseptic trailers. Their generosity is

suffocating, and only a growing determination to survive allows Emily and Sarah to escape. One last trial awaits the heroine as, after ignoring the

warning of a bystander, she must watch a band of gypsies abscond with Sarah. From the beginning she has indulged Sarah, given in to her whims; the result is not gratitude, but resentment from a child so desperate for a

heritage that she willingly joins a Jesus revival, a senior citizens' wax museum, and a band of gypsies. The greatest irony is that Emily has scorned what she and her child so desperately need.

What has Emily learned from her cross-country travels? Early in her

journey she meets a little old Jewish storekeeper who was born in Berlin but has moved all over the United States, changing his name and identity

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so as to escape the shadow of his dead Siamese twin. Although Emily does not understand his aberration, it is clear that his plight is symbolic of hers.

Fleeing her Jewish shadow, she is courting isolation and a meaningless life.

Gradually, however, she affirms her identity as a Jewish woman "whose

history is long, if not happy, and who therefore can expect a future" (p. 169). And her future, she realizes, must contain a "gentle man like her

grandfather, a dreamer of good dreams," one who will share conversation and affection, as well as sex - not an inflexible Jewish patriarch but a middle class Jewish husband. Has Emily matured then, divested herself of her illusions? Is she now ready to marry Michael Forzhamer, the childhood cellist friend who adored her and whom she despised as a victim? Emily may sense what she needs, but she still allows herself to be exploited. In the last scene Emily, the voyeur, purchases brown-wrapped post cards purporting to be dirty pictures. But instead of exotic models and erotic poses, she finds shots of Hershey bars in toilets, American cars, and a copy of the Declara- tion of Independence. So much for Emily's American dream. If her future, however, is still uncertain, she has at least been reconciled with Sarah who

clings to her at the journey's end. In her immaturity and romantic illusions Emily resembles Isadora Wing,

the audacious heroine of Fear of Flying. The latter also undertakes a journey but instead of crossing America, she flies with her husband to Europe. The

consequences of both travels are similar, however. Emily ends by getting a divorce in Mexico, while Isadora deserts her husband in Austria. Despite the possible reconciliation at the novel's end, there is ample evidence that Isadora will not remain with Bennett, for their marriage resembles the Johnsons'.

To begin the comparison, it is apparent that Isadora is also a paragon of confusion. Married early to Brian, a psychotic Jew who is convinced he is

Jesus Christ, she finally decides to save herself by leaving him. Like Emily, however, Isadora is continually attracted to the wrong people, to "sane Gentiles" instead of "crazy Jews."4 Her second husband, Bennett Wing, a Chinese analyst infatuated with Jewish women, doesn't understand and cannot respond to her. Silent, cold, mechanical, very similar to Emily Johnson's husband, Bennett cannot erase the painful memories of Isadora's childhood, of incompatible parents, a frustrated artist-mother and a suc- cessful businessman-father who was rarely at home.

Isadora knows she is Jewish - although without definition of that term.

Ignorant of the law and traditions, she is very conscious of the dangers awaiting all Jews. With a Marxist grandfather who forbade "religious ba-

loney" and universalist parents who believed in reincarnation, she was raised as a "pagan and a pantheist." No wonder she is confused, and yet like Emily, she identifies with Jews. Visiting Germany and later Austria,

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Isadora confesses that she "feels intensely Jewish and paranoid (are they the same?)" (p. 55). And how does she behave? By stalking Adrian Good- love, an egotistical Gentile psychiatrist who questions her about her ances-

try and then confesses he"likes" Jewish girls because they "are so bloody good in bed."

The parallels between the two books are obvious. While Emily imagines herself a Jewish sacrifice on the dentist's altar, Isadora fantasizes about Nazis torturing her and Dr. Goodlove raping her. Fearing anti-Semitism, they invite it. "Every woman adores a fascist," Isadora confesses (p. 131). In search of security they choose self-centered Gentiles who abuse them.

They suffer, but their knowledge is limited, their initiation is incomplete. At the end of Long Division, Emily Brimberg has a divorce decree in one hand, the Declaration of Independence in the other. But the latter is only a

copy, a cheap imitation. Without community, culture, or family, the "wan-

dering Jewess" (as she calls herself) confronts her future and dreams of a conventional life. The same cannot be said of Isadora, deserted by Goodlove in Paris and determined to get to England and "take her fate in her hands"

(p. 304). Back in her husband's hotel room, she relaxes in the bathtub while

awaiting Bennett's arrival. She is uncertain about his reaction to her pres- ence, but in a strong expression of self-love, she hugs her body and de- cides "she will survive" (p. 311). Given her erratic behavior throughout the book, Isadora's confidence is not entirely persuasive, especially when it is

acquired in one frightening night. Furthermore Isadora's self-love borders on solipsism. Her new conviction that "life has no plot" and that she will

"wing" it offers little to cheer about, especially from a traditional Jewish viewpoint. Nor does it ultimately satisfy Isadora (or Erica), who in a subse-

quent novel, How to Save Your Own Life, finally finds fulfillment with a

gentle Jewish lover. That the options for contemporary Jewish heroines needn't be indepen-

dence or traditional commitment is the resolution of Susan Fromberg Schaeffer's Falling. Journeying from New York to Chicago, from suicide to life, from bitterness to love, Elizabeth Kamen painfully sheds bad habits, self-pity, and dependence. With the guidance of Dr. Greene, a good Jewish psychiatrist (for a change), she examines the pieces of her life and rear-

ranges them. In the process she gains understanding of her family, herself, and her goals.

More developed, more serious, and obviously more Jewish than the other two works, Falling is the saga of a family, of a people, much as Faulkner's works are. To emphasize this, Schaeffer creates a family tree

beginning with Isaac Mazel and Jacob Kamen, two brothers who left Russia for England and America respectively. A brief Bible-like prologue entitled "The Old Country" establishes the reasons for the Kamen family's prob-

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lems. In the old country "it was a time of inexplicably happy marriages,"5 but once the Kamens arrived in America, life soured. True, Jacob, the

patriarch, became a wealthy manufacturer, but he also tyrannized the

family. In America his wife, Jenny, grew morose, "her eyes got worse and

worse, as if the very act of setting foot on the strange earth" (p. 6) had blinded her. These, then, are Elizabeth's paternal grandparents. Her mother's parents fare no better and finally separate, establishing a pattern of defeat for their children. Conditioned to parental anger, hostility, and

rejection, Elizabeth thinks little of herself. Convinced that her parents favor her brother Arthur, she is programmed

for failure and, much like Emily and Isadora, she makes the wrong choices. For six years she lives with Mark, a calculating, "pompous," Gentile doctor reminiscent of Alexander Johnson and Bennett Wing. Trapped, Elizabeth also seeks escape, but instead of flying or driving away, she half-heartedly attempts suicide, an act she will try several times in order to get attention and solve her problems. Repeatedly Elizabeth is drawn to "goyim." "Why wouldn't she date a Jew?" she asks herself early in the novel. Later an affair with Jeremy, a stingy, pasty-faced colleague, ends in failure and raises the same question. By that point, however, Elizabeth is closer to some answers and recovery. Having lived independently in Chicago, she has developed some resources. More importantly, she has spent several

years in analysis with Dr. Greene, whose honesty, concern, and involve- ment has guided her through tangled family relationships, romantic disap- pointments, and confused emotions. He is the guru who successfully ini- tiates her into experience. With a Ph.D. in English, she returns to New York to confront her family, and, as she tells the doctor, "to find a Jewish husband" (p. 120). The last accomplishment is preceded by two pitiful affairs, but finally a mature, more responsible Elizabeth meets the man she will marry.

Separated from his wife, Adam is not the perfect marital prospect, but he is gentle, unselfish, and Jewish (a combination which eludes the other two

heroines). He offers Elizabeth a home, "babies . . . everything she wants,

including a "normal wedding" replete with photographers, a multi-layered wedding cake, and an extravagant wedding dress (pp. 214-15). Adam's

love, along with Dr. Greene's counsel, and her own efforts contribute to new relationships with the family. Elizabeth is "surprised at how her anger [at her father] had evaporated" (p. 218). She encourages her teenaged cousin to be patient with his parents, as she must be with hers. The Kamens will continue to fight and hurt each other, but they are also bound to each other, as Elizabeth realizes in a dream she has the night before her

wedding. In the dream, her baby brother Arthur is drowning, while her mother, who cannot swim, is trying to save him. Within seconds, Elizabeth

joins them, and as they fall through space, their faces change into those of

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other family members. In the final scene she is swimming, providing sup- port to her mother and baby brother. A strong, self-confident Elizabeth, who has made her peace with the past and herself, awakens, prepared to

spend her life with Adam. The dream, as Sonya Michel notes, is "one of the most explicit ex-

pressions of reconciliation in American-Jewish literature. [Elizabeth's] strug- gle for identity culminates in a synthesis of two roles - the professional's and the wife's."6 Although able to accomplish what Emily and Isadora could not, Elizabeth is not a new figure in Jewish-American feminist writing. A half century earlier, Sara Smolinsky had succeeded in resolving the conflicts between her needs and family responsibilities, between her identi-

ty and Jewish obligations. In the final scene of Bread Givers, she "realizes that [she] had come back to where [she] had started twenty years ago. She [understands] that she cannot escape by running away, that the shadow was always following [her]."7 Her insight foreshadows Emily's and Eliza- beth's; her behavior offers a model for contemporary Jewish feminists who have traditional needs and seek to satisfy them as independent women.

Towson State University

Notes

1. Sarah Blacher Cohen, Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary American Literature (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 1978), p. 175. 2. Sonya Michel, "Mothers and Daughters in American-Jewish Literature," in The Jewish

Woman, ed. Elizabeth Koltun (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), p. 281. 3. Ann Roiphe, Long Division (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), p. 57. All subsequent

references are cited in the text. 4. Erica Jong, Fear of Flying (New York: New American Library, 1974), p. 32. All subse-

quent references are cited in the text. 5. Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Falling (New York: New American Library, 1974), p. 3. All

subsequent references are cited in the text. 6. Michel, p. 281. 7. Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers (New York: George Braziller, 1975), p. 295. First pub.

1925.

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