I know I spoke about this in class, but it’s poked at my mind quite a bit over the last few days. Jack’s obsession with his illusions, especially when it comes to Babette, strikes a chord with me. We have so much gender-loaded language in our society now, and even more in the 1980’s when White Noise was written. What is Babette to Jack? She doesn’t really fit into the classic virgin/whore dichotomy — she’s more of a triad. She is Jack’s innocence as the Babette who is always happy and truthful. She is Jack’s mother, his caregiver, his babytalk ‘Baba’, between whose breasts he burrows to try and hide from the world and his fears. She is his lover, who reads pornography to him and giggles when they make love.
She is never a person with her own wants, needs, fears, and sadnesses. When she shows any of those things to Jack, she becomes a false Babette, and he cannot do anything but repeat over and over that she’s not the real Babette. Jack is defining her by how she affects him, and how she matches with the picture of Babette that he has created. Babette cannot talk to Jack, her husband, about the fears of death that are crippling her, even to the extent of secretly taking an untested drug because it will shatter his illusions.
I wish that Delillo had explored Babette further, examined her character, hopes, fears, and flaws in a way that allowed the reader to see a clearer picture of who Babette is. An image of her that didn’t come through Jack’s filter of what he needed Babette to be instead who she is.
Yes, we definitely only ever see Babette filtered through Jack. To do otherwise (i.e. give Babette a 1st person voice) would expose all too quickly Jack’s pretensions and misapprehensions. But it would be an interesting exercise. Just as someone (as I mentioned in class) wrote a book review in Siskind’s character, what would Babette’s character sound like?