"The Only Flying Turtle Under The Sun," The Bildungsromon in Contemporary Women's Fiction

by Rebecca Smith

In Marge Piercy's novel Small Changes, Beth, one of the two main characters, finds herself trapped in a marriage that she had been conditioned to think was all she wanted from life, but that she his gaze. His anger was muted but actually discovers to be stifling and growing. She was something that deadening. Beth analyzes her husband was not working as it was supposed Jimbo's reaction to her dissatisfaction to. He was still trying to fix it. and her own fear in this excerpt from Soon he would lose his patience. the book: Then would he return it or break it? She felt caught in the gray web of One night as she lay trying to fall asleep beside him she remembered from a wild turtle would make a something from the summer when she child laugh. Threatened, they had was ten. One Saturday at a company a shell they could draw into and picnic . . . she had found a box tuck up inside. They were cautious turtle. He had a beautiful shell, and long-lived. No one could divided into sort of shingles above teach a turtle to do tricks. They and polished wood on the bottom. were quiet and could be mistaken They brought him back and made a for something not really alive, a home for him in the yard. They put rock or piece of wood. Sometimes up a chicken-wire fence and built a they aroused sadism in people. No house of broken bricks. All day the great power had ever marched out to conquest under the emblem of a turtle went round and round the (1) chicken wire, butting his head turtle. against the fence and standing up awkwardly on edge and flopping over When her mother, mother-in-law, sisters, backward trying to escape. . . . and friends align with her husband in Round and round the fence Roxy went attempting to shame and cajole her into making a trail in the dust and roll• "acting right," (p.40) she realizes that ing like a sad tank through the she is alone; she is the only champion water dish and over the lettuce and under the turtle banner. She plans and grapes they had put down, and around executes an escape from her cage. For aga in. the first time in her life as a daughter and wife, as she sits in the plane that During the next week she kept think• is taking her away, she senses the de• ing of the turtle. She was the tur• lights of freedom: "She clasped her tle going round and round the chic• hands and joy pierced her. She was ken wire searching for a way out. wiry with joy and tingling. How But she did not want Jim to take her beautiful to be up here. How beautiful back where he had found her because was flight and how free. . . . She was that was a prison too. She studied the only flying turtle under the sun." herself as turtle. Turtles were not (p. 46) glamorous creatures. They were slow but dogged. Maybe it took This particular image of "flying" is them a long while to get someplace, echoed in Erica Jong's Fear of Flying even to figure out where they when the heroine Isadora White Stoller- wanted to go, but then they kept man Wing determines to leave her particu stubbornly at it. They were not lar, current cage: beautiful but they carried what they needed. They were not particu• I thought of all the cautious good- larly brave and the idea of running girl rules I had lived by—the good student, the dutiful daughter, the books of literary terminology. M.H. guilty faithful wife who committed Abrams defines the Bi1 dungsroman as a adultry only in her own head—and I novel of "formation" or "education," decided that for once I was going tracing "the development of the protagon• to be brave and follow my feelings ist's mind and character as he passes no matter what the consequences- from childhood through varied experiences ... I thought of D.H. Lawrence --and usually through a spiritual crisis running off with his tutor's wife, — into maturity and the recognition of or Romeo and Juliet dying for love, his identity and role in the world."(3) of Aschenbach pursuing Tadzlo through plaguey Venice, of all the Holnjan's definition is even more decis• real and imaginary people who had ive in attributing gender to the genre: picked up and burned their bridges [A BiIdrungsroman is] A novel which and taken off into the wild blue recounts the youth and young man• yonder. I was one of them! No hood of a sensitive protagonist who scared housewife, I. I was fly• (2) is attempting to learn the nature ing. of the world, discover its meaning and pattern, and acquire a phil• Fear of Flying by Erica Jong and Smal1 osophy of life and "the art of Changes by Marge Piercy, both published 1iving."(4) in 1973, are two of the growing number The standard examples include Goethe's of novels by contemporary women writers Wilhelm Master's Apprenticeship, Mann's that detail the growth of major women The Magic Mountain, Dickens' David Cop- characters toward personhood, outside perfield, Butler's The Way of Al1 Flesh, the confines of stereotyped roles. The Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, Maugham's list also includes Memoi rs of an Ex- Of Human Bondage and Wolfe's Look Home• Prom Queen (1972) by Alix Kates Shu 1 man, ward Angel. The Diviners (1974) by Margaret Laurence and Lives of Girls and Women (1974) by Obviously missing from this historical Alice Munro. listing, and implicitly absent from con• sideration in the definition, are the These five novels mentioned fit into the comparatively few, but nonetheless power• classification of the Bi1 dungsroman or ful, apprenticeship novels written in the the "apprenticeship novel," heretofore past by women: Olive Schreiner's The largely a male domain. The past limita• Story of an African Farm, Dorothy tion of this genre to the artistic Richardson's PiIgrimage and Virginia presentation and analysis of the develop• Woolf's Orlando. Indeed, in the past, ment and maturation of males is indicated apprenticeship novels by women were in• by the standard definition given for the frequent. In the works of the great term in both Holman's and Abrams' hand• women writers of the past, such as Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot or loging of wrongs based on gender was Mrs. Gaskell, women protagonists usually nearly complete and women were ready to are shown to reach physical and emotional move to the next phase—the establishment maturity, at which point they find the of positive alternatives to the existing only possible identity, role or pattern obviously bad situation. A result was 1 1- for their lives by fitting themselves in• the proliferation in the 970's of Bi to the existing social structure, usually dungsroman in which sensitive female through a conventional marriage. Women protagonists encounter the attempts of in these earlier novels, by virtue of society to force them into stereotypical their bodies, frequently had a single and roles as they move from childhood through quite obvious identity as wife and mother, adulthood; they alternate between accep• tance, the path of least resistance and However, with the re-emergence of femin• rebellion; but finally they must attempt 1960 ism in the 1s came strong emphasis to live in the world on their own terms, for the first time, actually, on the fact so they suffer through to a new, authen• that forces besides biology most signifi• tic, human role. cantly shape a woman's fate. For example, Naomi Weinstein examined and attacked the This pattern is quite observable in the -1970 psychological conditioning of women in new post 's genre of the female Bil- the now-classic "Psychology Constructs dungsroman. The protagonists are excep• the Female." Eva Figes revealed the in• tionally intelligent and perceptive, in a herent flaws in the existent Western so• society that generally undervalues these cial structure in Patriarchial Attitudes. qualities in a female. For example, Following in the footsteps of the early Sasha Davis in Memoirs of an Ex-Prom feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, many Queen is accused by her friends of being studies such as the Canadian Status of a "brain": Women report have explained how the "Come on, admit it," said another existing sexist economic structure con• friend. "You have to be a Brain trols the lives of women. The resurgence to get into those Eastern colleges 1960 of feminist activity in the 's caused 11 — many women to perceive and then to attack "That's not true " I began ex• (5) the sexual inequality and injustices so citedly. evident in all areas of society, as in Del Jordan in Lives of Girls and Women Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, MMlett's is the second brightest person in her Sexual Politics, Greer's The Female class and is taken on encyclopedia- Eunuch and Shulamith Firestone's The selling trips by her mother because she Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist can remember an extraordinary number of 1 1 -(6) Revo ution. Al of these had been pub- facts. Similarly, Morag Gunn in The 1970. lished by By that time the cata• Diviners, Isadora in Fear of Flying, and both Beth Phall and Mariam Berg in would get the degrees and I who Small Changes are, ironically, made to would get the jobs.(p. 184) suffer because of their intelligence and perceptiveness. They must learn to deny Ultimately, the women learn that they are their intellects and subordinate them to sought not for their intellects but for those of men—their boyfriends, their their cleverness, for their charming lovers, their bosses, their husbands. combination of good looks and discreet Each of these women has been properly amount of intelligence, for their value conditioned by society to inhibit her as a bright possession. Sasha describes curiosity, intellect and ambition and the attitude of her first husband Frank, emphasize her physical attractiveness, who vowed never to marry a woman who was that is, to try to become the "prom not both beautiful and bright: queen" of Shulman's title. Advice on Frank took visible pride in me then, this subject is given to Mariam Berg showing me off and openly admiring when she tries to talk with an older, my cooking. . . . Even after [he successful, experienced professor of and his graduate student col• computer science of whom she is in awe: leagues] fell into shop talk, . . . You have an unusual intuitive while I cleared away the dinner mind—the best thing one can say dishes, he would send me affection• about any scientist. But you're ate glances for everyone to see. 185) an attractive, a very attractive (p. woman. So you'll do nothing. Why And her second husband Willy is made should you. . . . Only homely nearly speechless with injury and tears women survive to accomplish in when she has her hair cut. In a similar 371) their field.(p. way, Morag, suppressing her desire to take time for her writing, at first All the women recognize their own intel• chooses her hair style, her clothes and ligence, and it is recognized and en• her ideas to meet the quiet demands of courage to a point, by men--such as the her professor husband Brooke: class brain, professors at university, Her long black hair had been cut graduate students—who then try to much shorter and permed in the pre• "groom" these curious creatures, these vailing manner of the day. . . . intelligent attractive women. However, She feels slightly peculiar each as Sasha and the others learn, it is of time she gets her hair done, but course the woman who must subordinate Brooke likes her this way and she even her education to that of the man: has to admit it does look more Though we had agreed to study like femi ni ne. fury till our money ran out and then She watches her diet carefully and take turns getting jobs, at bottom is slender. She wears lightly we both knew it would be he who tailored suits in the daytime, with pastel blouses, sometimes frilled. female's role: She says that she never In the heat of the summer, cotton thinks of hair washing when she looks at dresses with flared skirts. . . . the moon. Instead, she Insists; "I wanted men to love me, and I wanted to In the evenings, meeting academic think of the universe when I looked at friends, she goes in heavily for the the moon. I felt trapped, stranded; it little black cocktail dress. . . . seemed there had to be a choice where She looks smart. there couldn't be a choice."(p. 150) She is a competent cook. Her apricot The most poignant description of the bread and peanut butter cookies are women's situation is given by Isadora in splendid, and her chocolate cake Fear of Flying: with fudge icing is beyond compare. She reads a great deal.(7) It was hopeless. If you were female And she promises Brooke to remain his and talented, life was a trap no child/wife: "... I will. Be—the way matter which way you turned. Either you said. I will."(p. 227) you drowned in domesticity (and had Walter Mittyish fantasies of es• As a consequence of their properly re• cape) or you longed for domesticity strained intelligence, these women usually in all your art. You could never are thought to be successful in society's escape your femaleness. You had terms. But subtle feelings of unease conflict written in your very emerge and increase. Indeed, as The blood. . . . And the lesson was Diviners relates, one day Morag—permed, clear: being a woman meant being feminine, slender, smart and competent— harried, frustrated, and always in total frustration and despair "throws angry. It meant being split into 157) a Benares brass ashtray through the kit• two irreconcilable ha Ives. (p. chen window."(p. 221) All the women protagonists become progressively torn by When the conflict emerges, some of the the conflicting pulls of their authentic women seek resolution of the tension selves and their public roles. This ten• through psychoanalysis—and are admon• sion is crystalized in an episode in The ished to "Ackzept being a vohman" (Fear Lives of Girls and Women: Del Jordan of Flying, p. 157). Sasha is advised reads an article describing the difference by her psychoanalyst, Dr. Webber, to between male and female modes of thought. "feel": "When you are fully able to do When looking at the moon, according to that, you will be able to give yourself the male psychologist author of the totally to your husband and have that article, a boy "thinks of the universe, blissful union with him you long for. its immensity and mystery; the girl (p. 208) Mariam Berg's psychoanalysis thinks, 'I must wash my hair.'" But Del results in similar advice. The five cannot fit herself into the prescribed women protagonists discover that society provides little support for the woman By these various means the heroines begin seeking self-awareness and self- to break down the general and particular identity. barriers that have kept them from a achieving self-awareness, self-confidence Finally, because of the rigidity of the and self-affirmation. All.of their lives structure in which they are forced to have constituted the "spiritual crisis" exist, all break away in what is, under that these women, the protagonists in the each of their particular social circum• female Bi1 dungsroman, must face. But stances, a profound and irrevocable way. single crystal-clear moments of anger, Del Jordan chooses to live independent• pain and awareness have precipitated the ly, like the men in her society, and to actual acts of self-affirmation. And af• "go out and take on all kinds of ex• ter the characters make the break, the periences and shuck off what [she] change prophesied by Del Jordan's mother, didn't want and come back proud ."(p. 147} Ada, can begin: So she makes her plans to leave her home• There is a change coming I think in town Jubilee and go away to university, the lives of girls and women. Yes. while all her friends remain to marry But it Is up to us to make it come. up local boys. Sasha and Isadora leave All women have had till now has their husbands for mad dashes through been their connection with men. All Europe in search of what Isadora calls we have had. No more lives of our the "zipless fuck." Morag Gunn runs away own, really, than domestic animals from her husband and becomes pregnant by . . . . It is self-respect I am Jules, a Metis. Beth is forced to physi• really speaking of. Self-respect- Cpp. cally escape from her husband twice and 146-147) finally chooses a lesbian relationship. And Mariam returns with eagerness to her With the dramatic breakaway, the women neglected work and friends, following protagonists experience a sense of free• her realization that: dom for the first time and Images of Out of such connections she could flight, rebirth, transcendence and "re• weave no security, no protection kindled fires" are crucial as the against her worst fears. But of writers attempt to share with the reader such connections were wrought an this awareness of personal freedom and end to the slow relentless dying power experienced by the protagonists as back she had known, and the slow they move under the banner of the "fly• undramatic refounding, single ing turtle." thought by small decision by petty act, of a life: her life. That The female Bi1 dungsroman has become an life shone too dimly but with con• important genre for contemporary women siderable heat, banked coals in the writers whose consciousnesses have been dark.(p. 538) informed by the current women's movement. crises This is true because, as Ellen Morgan new yet to face. Beth is in hiding states in "Humanbecoming: Form and Focus with her lover Wanda because of laws that in the Neo-Feminist Novel," the "novel of prohibit a lesbian from raising her own apprenticeship is admirably suited to children. Mariam is about to be left express the emergence of women from cul• with her two children by her husband who tural conditioning into struggle with has found a younger, more sympathetic, institutional forces, their progress to• and less intelligent woman. And Isadora ward the goal of full personhood, and —minus the "cold stone" of fear that the effort to restructure their lives she had worn inside her chest all her and society according to their own 3M) "(8) life (p. --has returned to work out vision of meaning and right living. her relationship with her husband The five woman protagonists—Sasha in Bennett. But Isadora Knows, at the end Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, Morag in of the novel, as do the other protagon• The Diviners, Del in Lives of Girls and 1 ists, that she will survive by "being Women, Mariam and Beth in Smal Changes born over and over. It wasn't easy, and and Isadora in Fear of Flying are faced It was always painful. But there wasn't at the end of the novels with the knotty, 311) any other choice except, death" (p. unsolved problem of applying their new of her mind and spirit. Morag will con• "recognition of [their] identity and role tinue to "look ahead into the past, and in the world," mentioned in Abrams1 back into the future, until the silence." definition, and their new "philosophy of ^53) (p- And even timid Beth finally life and 'the art of living,"1 noted by 1- knows that, despite her fear, she "can Holmans in his definition of the B? fight. And sometimes, sometimes win." dunqsroman, to their actual lives — to 527) (p. "reality," as Del Jordan says.

Indeed, there are no unequivocably happy The protagonists are left to deal with endings to these female apprenticeship their new-found freedom, power, relative novels: Sasha is shown at the conclusion fearlessness and unlimited potential. of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen calling Thus, the conclusions of these five 1 her only friend to make plans, it is im• Bi dungs roman are realistically affirma• plied, to take her two small children tive—providing new, strongly positive and leave her second husband. Morag re• models for all women to follow as they mains alone in her farm house on the as well begin to align themselves under riverbank. Del has a whole lifetime of the banner of "the flying turtle." NOTES 8. Ellen Morgan, "Humanbecoming: Form and Focus in the Neo-Feminist Novel, 1. Marge Piercy, Sma11 Changes (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications Inc., "Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives, Revised ed. Susan PP- -5o~! Hereafter, references to this book will be given in the 1973), 39 Koppelman Corn iI 1 on, ed". (Bowli ng Green, Ohio: Bowli ng Green, Un i vers i ty body of the text. Popular Press, 1973), p. 185- Erica Jong, Fear of Flying (New York: Signet Books, New American Library, 2. 9. In an essay entitled 'Voman as Outsider" (from Woman in Sexist Society, P- 171. Hereafter, references to this book will be given in the 1973). eds. Gornick and Moran, N.Y., 197'). Vivian Gornick explores an idea body of the text. akin to de Beauvoir's, that women have for so long been regarded as some• how alien and unrea1 that they are not treated as human beings but as mem• 3. M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 3rd ed. (New York: Holt Rine- bers of a race apart, as myths and stereotypes, archetypes and cliches: hart and Winston, Inc., 1971), pp. 112-113. "I am a collection of myths. I am an existential standln. The idea of me is real--.the temptress, the goddess, the child, the mother, but, J_ am not real-"(p. 144) 4. C. Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 3rd ed. (New York: Odyssey Press, Bobbs-MerriI 1 Co., Inc. , 1972), p. 39- 10. For instance, Katherine Waters, in "Margaret Atwood: Love on the Dark Side 5. Alix Kates Shulman, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (New York: Bantam Books, of the Moon," writes "And the final insight of the apparently victimized 1972), p. 147. Hereafter, references to this book will be given in the Marion [sic] ... is that she may well be Implicated in the cannibalism body of the text. from which she was trying to escape . . . ." From Mother Was Not A Person, ed. Margaret Anderson (Montreal, 1972), p. 104. 6. Alice Munro, The Lives of Girls and Women (Scarborough, Ontario: New American Library of Canada, Ltd., 1974), p. 56. Hereafter, references to 11. Eleven Canadian Novelists (Toronto, n.d.), p. 25- this book wt11 be given in the body of the text.

7. Margaret Lawrence, The Diviners (New York: Bantam Books, 1974), pp. 220- 221. Hereafter, references to this book will be given in the body of the text.