Bridgewater Review Volume 4 | Issue 1 Article 12 Apr-1986 Book Reviews David Richards Bridgewater State College Hal DeLisle Bridgewater State College Richard A. Henry Bridgewater State College Recommended Citation Richards, David; DeLisle, Hal; and Henry, Richard A. (1986). Book Reviews. Bridgewater Review, 4(1), 22-25. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol4/iss1/12 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Book Reviews Tavris disputes each of these beliefs. tunately, these three conditions are seldom Rather, she views anger as a social event. a met. form of communication. To be sure, anger Does alcohol release anger? Alcohol ANGER is in part a product of our biological soothes angry individuals as often as it heritage. However, unlike animal aggres­ inflames them. Tavris suggests that alcohol The Misunderstood sion, which may occur more or less auto­ merely provides one with a social excuse to matically in response to certain stimuli, behave in ways that might be otherwise Emotion human anger is influenced by judgment and threatening or uncomfortable. choice. Which sex has the anger problems? Tav­ For example, whether or not we become ris produces some interesting statistics. Carol Tavris angry in a given situation depends upon our Very few studies have found any sex dif­ interpretation of that situation. Behind ferences in proneness to or expression of Simon and Schuster, Inc. every incidence of anger is the belief that anger. Males are more aggressive than fe­ New York: 1982 someone is not behaving as he or she ought males, but only to strangers. In the home, to behave. Furthermore, the message of neither husbands nor wives are more aggres­ mericans have mixed attitudes towards anger is, according to Tavris, "Pay atten­ sive. And this lack of sex difference in­ A anger. At one time anger was thought tion to me.I don't like what you are doing. cludes direct physical aggression. Wives are to be a very destructive emotion which Restore my pride. You're in my way. apparently just as likely as husbands to be should be suppressed at any cost, but it has Danger. Give me justice." Thus, anger is a physically violent towards their spouses, more recently been seen as a healthy emo­ message to another with a desired social but less likely to use fists, guns, and knives, tion whose suppression entails a physical objective. As with any other communica­ and thus less likely to cause serious injury. and psychological price. We are advised by tion, we choose to express it. Tavris has not answered all the questions the "angerindustry", psychotherapy, thatwith­ Tavris cites extensive research evidence one might have and her book is at times in many a tranquil person is a furious one in support of her thesis, evidence which rambling and anecdotal. Yet, she is always crying to get out and that blocking this also provides partial answers to some peren­ thought-provoking. No one who reads her anger can produce depression, guilt, anxi­ nial questions about anger. Does suppres­ book will ever again think of anger as ety, family problems, psychosomatic ill­ sing anger cause illness, specifically high something which "just happens" to us. ness, and even suicide. Some ofus dutifully blood pressure and heart disease? Converse­ Anger is a social tool which we choose to follow this advice and express our anger at ly, does expressing anger reduce stress? use. Although anger may have destructive every thwarted wish, cleansing our systems Tavris concludes that either expressing or consequences, both to others and to our­ in the process. Yet, we are also aware that suppressing anger seems to be related to selves, it can also be used morally to rectify anger may be dangerous, that it can have elevated blood pressure. How should these wrongs. serious social consequences. So, others, apparently contradictory findings be ex­ fearing the loss of control that anger may plained? The critical variable is not suppres­ David Richards bring, suffer injustice in silence. Most ofus sion versus expression but rather the persis­ Associate Professor who don't react in these extreme ways tence of stress, which is in turn associated Psychology Department remain ambivalent about how to respond. with high physiological arousal. Suppres­ Carol Tavris challenges many of the sing our anger is undesirable if, by not prevailing assumptions about anger, par­ revealing our feelings, we allow the stressful ticularly those of psychologists and psychi­ situation to continue. However, expressing atrists of the"ventilationist" persuasion. anger can also be harmful if it subjects us to Those who recommend ventilating one's continued stress (as may happen if we anger do so on the basis ofseveral question­ alienate friends and spouses or get fired). A MAGGOT able beliefs, in large part a distortion of the The anger strategy which seems to work legacies ofDarwin and Freud. These beliefs best is reflecting, waiting until we have by are, first, that anger is an instinctive, bio­ calmed down, and then trying to reason logically based response to threat or the with the person who has made us angry. John Fowles frustration ofgoals and desires. Since anger Anger deals with other common questions. Little~Brown is an instinct, attempting to suppress it will Does "talking out" anger get rid ofit? Most ultimately fail. Second, anger is a form of people think so, but the evidence suggests Boston: 1985 emotional energy which can be "dammed that "talking it out" rehearses the emotion up," "spill over" and possibly "flood" the and might make one worse offby providing system. Third, ifthe outward expression of a label and justification for one's feelings. anger is prevented, anger turns inward, Should one always remain quiet? No. Re­ ohn Fowles is, not surprisingly, up to his resulting in neurosis, depression, guilt, and member that anger is a social communica­ old tricks. I say "not surprisingly" be­ psychomatic illness. Fourth, catharsis, tion with consequences. Discussing your Jcause we have sufficient and increasing treated by many today as nearly synony­ anger can sometimes lead to practical solu­ evidence from his store of novels, articles, mous with emotional ventilations, empties tions to a problem. When is the expression and interviews to suggest quite clearly not the emotional reservoirs and prevents ag­ of anger cathartic, or calming? Tavris re­ only where he has been but also where he gression and all the other ills associated ports that aggression is cathartic if you might be going. Surely a writer can carve with blocked emotions. Catharsis may be retaliate against the person who you feel out new territory; but A Maggot, his most achieved in various and sundry ways, rang­ deserves the blame, if your retaliation in­ recent novel, though markedly different in ing from "talking it out," exercising, shout­ flicts an appropriate degree of harm (no plot and material from The Magus, The ing, playing sports and watching violent more and no less) to the target, and if your Ebony Tower, and Daniel Martin, and even movies, to pounding a pillow. target doesn't retaliate against you. Unfor- The French Lieutenant's Woman which is set 22 in the same Dorsetshire countryside, bears plains in his "Prologue" to mean "a whim a striking resemblance to his earlier work in or quirk...an obsession with a theme." The structure and theme. maggot of his novel, the seed from which Simply, thus unfairly, stated, Fowles, the story springs, is a fleeting, imaginary like many of his predecessors in the tradi­ picture of a "small group of travellers, tion of the English novel, places his central faceless, without apparent motive.. .in a KANSAS character in a mysterious, sometimes per­ deserted landscape...." From this modest sonally threatening situation, moves him scene Fowles gives his faceless group a local through a series of self-revealing crises habitation and a name, and fashions an which force him to assess himselfand make intriguing novel of adventure, mystery, Kansas lies down crucial self-defining choices, and then de­ suicide, suspected murder, deceit, sex and because the rest of the country mands that he act on his decisions. Usually, love, and, importantly, faith. Woven into won't. It rolls on one side he incorporates an open scene in nature for the fabric of his material are consistent then the other, critical events, a literal green world, which patterns ofplay-actihg and stage directing, of verdant or brown. Here becomes a recurrent device in his novels, known lying and suspected falsehood. the earth speaks only one that identifies Fowles with the ancient Fowles brilliantly invokes the spirit and to the earth. When people came pastoral tradition. (Serious critics beware; flavor of eighteenth-century England they were told to rest Fowles holds little regard for academics; (much as he did for the nineteenth century or else continue on. "classics-stuffed Strasbourg geese," he in The French Lieutenant's Woman) by inter­ Because Kansas knows the value lacing copies of pages from-rhe Gentleman's once called them). Thematically, the course of sleep, night hangs ofevents usually brings the main character Quarterly at strategic points in the narrative, just above the waist, to understand that the only true freedom by incorporating political and sociological and in daytime the sky commentaries by the intrusive authorial for the individual is the freedom he shapes rests on any hand voice (when were undergarments adopted by his own choices, that his identity is not held up to it. to be bestowed by society or by tradition by eighteenth-century gentlewomen; what but by his own freely chosen acts. For was the attitude ofthe clergy toward change Fowles, the individual must pass from self­ and property), by re-creating the pompous Fran Quinn delusion through self-analysis to choice.