Can it be considered a feminist book? I do think there is a certain amount of satire in the way Joanna Russ is writing this, which may be an attempt to produce some resistance to notions about women especially considering the date when it was written, but I’m not sure.  I mean, I still haven’t figured out what I really think about House of Leaves just because there was so much to it, but I’m hoping that the Female Man will be a little easier to tackle.

So on the drive home after class on Thursday I was listening to NPR, which makes me a nerd first of all, but also fairly up to speed on news I would like to think.  They had a story on “All Things Considered” about Margaret Chase Smith who was the first woman from a major political party to run for president.  (The first woman was actually Victoria (Clafin) Woodhull in 1872.)  It was strange to listen to this story about a woman running in 1964 for the Republican party (which I didn’t see coming), who was self described as hawkish, but as a part of her campaign for the presidency she had a theme song and talked about how her blueberry muffins would be far better than Kruschev’s.  The criticisms most commonly leveled against her was that as a woman she lacked the stamina to be president, or that her emotions would cloud her judgement, and in her speech to announce her bid for the presidency she addressed those ideas along with her other limitations.  It is kind of funny to listen to because she cites all these reasons that she shouldn’t run, and then says she’s going to do it anyway.  The story called attention to the fact that what helped her to relieve stress was vaccuuming.  Really?  Her bid was such a long shot that I don’t think it was paid a lot of attention to, but in the story it is evident that she had to struggle to remain tough enough, yet feminine.  Why are the two made into separate things?  It made me think about Hillary Clinton and a little bit about Sarah Palin, but I’ll save that for Tuesday.

Bringing it back to the novel though there seem to be these opposites, not polar, but very different in Janet and Jeannine.  One very meek while the other asserts herself, and I think for what we’ve talked about concerning Jael, she and Jeannine would be polar opposites.  As for Joanna’s place, I’m going to put her somewhere between Jeannine and Janet.  It’s cleaner that way.  So there is a scale of meekness to assertiveness, neither of which are portrayed positively.  Here’s where the satire comes in – there seems to be no character hits some sort of neutral point.  It’s either too much (Janet’s smugness) or too little (Jeannine’s whining).  No such thing as a good woman in this story I guess (but you can’t say much for the guys in the story either).  They don’t try to balance toughness and femininity and are portrayed negatively, but I don’t know if it is necessarily because of it.  I ultimately don’t think there is a balance and I wish people could just be without the striving, but that is what you see if you look at Margaret Chase Smith or Clinton or Palin – a strived for balance that is unattainable.