Subject: Re: Where are all the fully-drawn female characters in Salinger?
From: Lucy Pearson (lima_bean@altavista.com)
Date: Mon Jan 31 2000 - 13:39:07 EST
It's interesting that you should raise this now, Paul, because it's something which has been drifting around my own mind oflate. When we were discussing the question of who is the most spiritually developed / whose spiritual journey we are really following in the stories, it occurred to me that none of Salinger's female characters get any very active part in their own spiritual enlightenment. OK, Franny is seeking for some enlightenment, but is it through her own study and meditation that she attains it? No. It's not even through an encounter with some super holy person: it is Zooey (who I do love very much) who sets her straight, tells her she's had the wrong idea the whole time and gives her the peace which she finally attains at the end of Zooey. Most of the other female characters are either children (and therefore sill in an ideal state of innocence) or removed from questions of spirituality. Esme (who is not quite a child) does "restore" Sergeant X, and the nun is the id!
!
eal in DDSBP, but in the latter DDS has his own enlightenment which enables him to see the nun in a diffrent light; she doesn't give him that enlightenment.
I am not setting out to criticise this apparent absence in Salinger's fiction. He is, after all, a man, and therefore likely to write about massive internal spiritual changes from a male point of view. I don't see that as any crime. But it is interesting.
Now I think about it more, I wouldn't agree that Salinger's stories lack fully-drawn female chracters. Uncle Wiggily alone gives him a big plus mark in my book for perfectly drawn women. That one line about the girl "with little or no facility for being left alone in a room" is fantastic in itself. I think that the women are characterised more by small but acutely observed details, which makes them less full in the sense of what is happening inside their heads. Again, this is probably something to do with the fact that Sal has never been inside a woman's head! I have gained such a strong picture of his femal characters through the descriptions of them. In fact, he has almost a woman's eye - he homes in on details women would be likely to notice and asess other women by (I mean this as a very general statement). For example, the Matron of Honour holds her bouquet like a deflated ball. Brilliant.
Another thing which is interesting about the "any women?" issue is the ease with which women relate and warm to Salinger's stories. Until I began to analyse it, I had never realised the "problems" I have discussed in this post. Roughly how many women are there on the list? What are the proportions? It would be interesting to know if men are more likely to warm to Salinger. Personally, I think not.
I could ramble on for ages about this, but I think I have said all that I really have to say, so I'll stop while the goings good.
Love, Lucy-Ruth
On Sat, 29 January 2000, Paul Kennedy wrote:
>
> Otherwise know as:Where are all the fully-drawn female characters in Salinger?
>
>
> OK folks, it's been a long time since I've ventured onto the thinnish ice of
> volunteering something that came from the top of my head (what a bizarre
> place to which we westerners ascribe thoughts!) rather than from a book, or
> from someone else. But I wanted to ask "Where have all the women gone in JDS?"
>
> Here's how this came about. I think you know that I went to Chicago this
> week. Catherine weighed in most recently with her account of what I earlier
> called "The Chicago Convention", and Cecilia described earlier still as
> "Hey, Holden, there's a bear in that canoe"--which DOES happen to be one of
> the great lines of ALL TIME; or is that Tim?. Reading Catherine's post
> reminded me (although I'm sure the thought struck me the moment we met
> somewhere near my solar plexus--which seems to me a slightly more logical
> place to plant the factory of our imagination) how much Catherine is
> actually Franny incarnate. (Maybe THAT's why I confused the title of the
> book that she clutched so carefully, along with the copy of ONION--which
> confused me even further when I tried to read it later in my hotel room.
> But that, perhaps, is another story.....)
>
> As further evidence, I'd like to quote from her wonderful post about
> carpenters (and even lowly painters--for Chrissake!) being almost as close
> as a person can come to being an architect of the soul. I mean, a guy can't
> help but fall in love with such an angel, just from reading between the
> words and suddenly seeing right into her soul. (I know of only one other
> architect who's ever pushed my mind in these directions, and interestingly
> enough, she was a woman too. If it's not somehow redundant to say
> so....Maybe you hang out with too many old boy architects, Scottie?) The
> more I think about it, the more Catherine seems like Franny....
>
> Anyway, thinking about Catherine and Franny, I got to wondering whether I
> (being also a bananafish) might resemble (in Matt's magnificent mirror) some
> other member of the Glass family. And to my utter horror, the first person
> to come to mind (a somewhat more successful description of the mental
> process, I think....) was Buddy.
>
> Buddy's always been my least favourite member of the Glass family. (It was
> so nice of you guys earlier this week to try to pre-empt my paranoia, and
> make me feel better by suggesting that Buddy is the still centre around
> which the entire family, indeed the entire universe revolves... which I
> think is bullshit, by the way. Did I use my "which" wisely?) When I was
> twelve, and first ready Franny and Zooey, I desperately wanted to be Zooey.
> But I was so much older then (sorry guys, but the Bard finds his way into
> many of my memory bank movies), I'm younger than that now. It's difficult
> for me to imagine how I've somehow turned into someone who in some ways
> might resemble Buddy.
>
> Perhaps to avoid this painful train of thought (and painful mental
> image--try to 'verhstehen' [love the verb, LOVE Dilthey!] a freight train
> moving from your left ear to your right) I started wondering which of the
> Glasses best reflected Cecilia....
>
> I really know so little about Boo Boo. But the blonde bombshell who puts
> all her faith in the Cubs (....and I should tell you that I also always fall
> instantly in love with a person who puts all her faith in losers) could
> never be compared to Boo Boo..... Who then?
>
> Bessie? C'mon....... Phoebe? Maybe when she was younger, and playing
> painful pieces about Prague in 1968 (Cecilia wasn't even BORN in 1968!
> .... Sorry for that exclamation mark, Cecilia! Oops....) on her clarinet.
> Cecilia as a kid maybe coulda been Ol' Phoebe. But not now. There's no one
> in the canon that would work.
>
> But this brings up another problem. When you sit down and think about it,
> there aren't that many interesting women in all of JDS's work. I guess we
> could put this down (appropriate direction! ....Oops, sorry again, Cecilia)
> to the old white male conspiracy once again. What about Shakespeare? (with
> the wonderful exceptions of Cleopatra, and Juliet, and Rosalind, and Lady
> MacBeth--well, maybe there are too many exceptions in Shakespeare, including
> Shakespeare himself....)
> But, what about Dickens? (Wow! Even before I start to answer that
> question, dozens of exceptions spring to mind....) Ibsen? Well, there's
> Nora. And there's Mrs. Alving. Tennessee Williams was better at women than
> he was a men. (Only a personal opinion, but I'll take on any comers who'd
> like to suggest that the Gentleman Caller is the most interesting character
> in The Glass Menagerie.... Streetcar?, you say. .... Say no more....)
>
> ASIDE FROM FANNY (about whom we've been a bit disparaging, of late, if only
> when discussing the story that bears her name) WHERE ARE ALL THE INTERESTING
> CHARACTERS IN SALINGER?
>
> (Bonus marks will be given to the earliest submissions. Spelling and
> grammar counts for something, I'll just have to figure out what....)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Paul
>
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