“I had got stuck with Jeannine,” writes the invisible narrator at the beginning of Part Five (83) of The Female Man. Indeed, we readers may at times feel as though we are trapped with this odd character, reluctant voyeurs of an unhappy life. As Christina notes in this week’s post, it’s interesting that Jeannine seems to be the only character who does not speak in the first person. What I also notice about Jeannine in Part Five and most notably Part Six of this novel is how she comes to dominate the narrative while her “voice” becomes increasingly erratic and unstable. We have three pages 105-107 of detailed exposition of every motion and action that she takes in her apartment, for example, including inane efforts to “clean up,” sew, polish her shoes and pack (with excruciating detail) her suitcase. It’s emblematic of her world of small things (like the lists that go on and on in White Noise) and small thoughts.
This is juxtaposed with more cynical digressions about female happiness (plastic women in a plastic world), from various versions of “When are you going to get married?” (113) to the “Great Happiness Contest” (116). The fact that Jeannine’s story takes up so much space, especially her rambling and contradictory self-talk that is increasingly depressive and cast against feminist sensibilities (“Do you want to be an airline pilot? Is that it? And they won’t let you?”) is both interesting and exasperating. The only conversation here, I think, is the one going on the author’s head, and it’s an angry one from the sound of it. Well, it’s just SO 1970s, and I can say that, I’ve been there. It was fresh for its time and well overdue, however, so I should not be too critical or impatient; heck, when I was in college for the first time there were more men than women enrolled. Imagine that.
Still, The Female Man is not feminist utopian fiction, as Professor Sample assured us, so what is it? At first I liked the idea of further considering the “thought experiment” he mentioned that explores what happens if the author presents different versions of the same woman who SHOULD think and feel alike but do not. One could explore that with any identity group—women, ethnic minorities, teenage boys, born-again Christians, and so on—however, so that seems insufficient. I want more. I’m banking on reading more about Whileaway and the elusive utopia (or distopia) it may or may not represent. If it all turns out to be simply a way to point the finger at men for our problems of dissension, aggression, and warmongering in the world, well, that’s still not very interesting or illuminating in 2008. How about Maggie Thatcher and the Falklands War? She was tough; they didn’t call her the Iron Lady for nothin’ (okay, if she was a man they wouldn’t call her Iron anything, they would just call her Prime Minister). Still, Jael has yet to come into the picture here in this novel, so I’m looking forward to being surprised.