JUNE~ 1952 . 35 cents Vol. 5, No. 6 Editor SAMUEL SILLEN MASSES Associate Editors HERBERT APTHEKER & LLOYD L. BROWN Mainstream Contributing Editors MILTON BLAU PHILLIP BONOSKY RICHARD 0 . BOYER W. E. B. DUBOIS ARNAUD D'USSEAU June, 1952 PHILIP EVERGOOD HOWARD FAST BEN FIELD The Fictional American Woman Ma-rg-rit Reiner 1 FREDERICK V. FIELD SIDNEY FINKELSTEIN HUGO GELLERT Civil Rights and the Liberals Herbert Aptheker 11 BARBARA GILES MICHAEL GOLD ]. D. Bernal 18 SHIRLEY GRAHAM The Living Leonardo WILLIAM GROPPER ROBERT GWATHMEY Carmencita Jesus Colon 24 MILTON HOWARD CHARLES HUMBOLDT V. J. JEROME Right Face 31 JOHN HOWARD LAWSON MERIDEL LE SUEUR A. B. MAGIL The Relation of Art to Reality G. N edoshivin 32 JOS_E;PH NORTH PAUL ROBESON HOWARD SELSAM 0 Great Green Wall A-Growing (poem) JOSEPH STAROBIN Lee Jenson 48 JOHN STUART THEODORE WARD CHARLES WHITE Good Morning (poem) Menelaos Loudemis 49 Literature of the New Resistance joseph Starobin 50 MASSES & MAINSTREAM IS pubtished monthly by Masses Books in Review: & Mainstream, Inc., 832 Broadway, New York 3, N.Y. Atomic Imperialism, by James S. Allen: Subscription rate $4 a year; Rob F. Hall 59 foreign and Canada, $4.50 a year. Single copies 35c,· out­ side the U.S.A., 50c. Re­ Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison: Lloyd L. Brown 62 entered as second class matter February 25, 1948, at the Post Office at New York, Drawings by Beltran, Levine, Zimmerman N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Copyright 1952. PRINTED IN U.S.A. ~209 THE FICTIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN :~i r.. :: ·· ~- ~ A. Look At Some Recent Novels l .... ·- -" . By MARGRIT REINER THE treatment of women in Amer- of labor, equal with men and their ican fiction today confronts pro­ partners in the socialist society. The gressive critics with a challenge they upsurge of understanding of the role can no longer ignore. Writers, read­ and position of women is similarly ers and reviewers alike have . become reflected in the literature of the New . so accustomed to male supremacist Democracies and especially of Peo­ ideas that they take them for granted ple's China, where women are step­ and regard them as normal. The bour­ ping from feudalism to socialist free­ geois writer reflects in his writing dom in one generation. the male supremacist attitudes he ob­ The U.S. fictional heroine is cut serves in the world around him, but from a different cloth. To observe the distortion does not end there. her, novels from last year's best sell­ His treatment of women in fiction is ers and book club selections were designed to justify and perpetuate chosen. An examination of these these attitudes. books reveals a clear pattern. .This purpose governs the writer's The problems, real or distorted, of selection, his viewpoint and his omis­ the bourgeois woman occupy a pre­ sions. Female writers as well as male, dominant place in U.S. literature. many progressive as well as all re­ With a few notable exceptions the actionary writers follow the ruling working-class women appear mainly class ideology, the taboos and stereo­ as domestic workers or "comic relief" type concepts, in their trea~ent of ~ueer, uncouth, peculiar people. women. This is especially glaring in the de­ Such concepts are far from being piction of Negro women . "universal": Gorky's "Mother" has It is assumed of most fictional long since been joined by a host of heroines that they-or their husbands heroines in Soviet fiction-heroines -have sufficient money at their dis-. 1 2 Masses & Mainstream posal to solve their household and writer to shun such "unpleasant" sub­ child care problems by way of "the jects. · maid." Since this situation is taken This, then, is the first part of the for granted, the bourgeois novelist pattern: omission - the forgotten hardly ever concerns himself with it. heroine. But ro bury her safely . is The only subject fit for his considera­ no easy matter. Every major gain in tion is the bourgeois personality and this country was made possible only its problems. with her active participation, often By this very choice, reality has her leadership. Her workworn figure slipped through the writer's fingers. intrudes upon the agitated bedroom For at the base of all reality concern­ scene. The culture based on denying ing the bourgeois woman stands the her existence remains a hollow edi­ forgotten heroine-the working-class fice peopled with vague creatures. and Negro woman. It is the presence of women workers in factories which · THEN there is the stereotype. The provides the economic ground upon "good woman" in fiction is the which the loves and emotions of the woman happily confined in the glass "woman in the suburb" thrive. It is cag~ of "her proper place." Love, not the domestic worker in the kitchen, labor is woman's concern and wom­ unsung and unmentioned, who frees an's place is. in the home-these ideas the lady for her "interesting" loves, reflect and bolster the economic ex­ adulteries and career. ploitation of women under capital­ Were the writer to deal with the ism. Unequal pay for equal work is forgotten heroine as a subject he one side of the coin-the little wom­ would immediately have to face up an in her dream home is the other. to the issues of economic dependence, Novel after novel expounds the limited job opportunities, lower theme that woman's happiness is to wages, absence of child care and be found only in the home and the heal~ facilities, and educational re­ family. Josephine Johnson's The Way strictions. He would have to reckon Things Are is typical. Here, the mod­ with mothers robbed of their normal ern woman is the "bad woman." She family life, oppressed with the double goes to work, leaves her children in burden of work outside the home and the indifferent care of domestic work­ work for their own families, children ers and progressive schools, drinks, deprived and stunted, marriages shad­ plays cards and runs to meetings. The owed by insecurity and drudgery. husbands are not much better, but Reason · enough for the bourgeois it is understood that they are "hen­ pecked," so that it's really the women who are to blame for the inevitable MARGRIT REINER is the author of result: divorce, juvenile delinquency, "Morning," a short story which appeared feelings of insecurity. in our March, 1951, issue. The old-fashioned girl in the story The Fictional American Woman 3 is sweet and · kind but clearly unfit in bourgeois fiction. ". we have to live alone in the unsheltered world. only one important problem. Your Fortunately, the strong guiding hand happiness, your success, what you of a kind and capable young man is want." Here the active "bad" woman available. Wedding bells take care of subordinates herself to "superior" man all problems. The old-fashioned girl ·and becomes passive - a "good" will be happy, because she knows her woman. place. The gilded cage in which women Such themes are legion. One of were confined as willing prisoners America's most popular women writ­ to their "superior" husbands was ers, Taylor Caldwell, illustrates the shaken when-at the turn of the cen­ workings of the double standard as tury-Ibsen's Nora slammed the door applied to men and women in fiction. on her "doll's house" and walked In The Balance Wheel her hero out into freedom. But that was a long Charles, a Pennsylvania manufacturer, time ago, in an era of bourgeois real­ struggles actively with his conscience, ism and liberal thought. Current U.S. a man in conflict with his brothers literature, true to the class interest of and his time. His struggles to keep his imperialism, has retreated even be­ son out of war, his failure and resig­ hind the limited advancement of nation lend some depth and credibil­ Ibsen's thought, and is now attack­ ity to an otherwise banal plot. ing even the hard-won bourgeois But the heroine, Phyllis, the proto­ rights of American women. type of the "good woman," is sharply Nora left the doll'.s house because in contrast to the man she loves. Pure, she refused to suffer any longer a patient .and slightly inhuman, Phyllis marriage based on the oppression of moves through the plot gracefully, woman. The modern bourgeois hero­ braving family feud, love for her hus­ ine is quite content with the empty band's brother, scandal and war with­ "freedom" of sexual license. This new out disturbing a hair on her head. Her "love," while somewhat different in function is to love and to suffer, to form from the·old, is just as securely heal and smooth over. Her role is based on inequality. Hemingway's passivity, her main asset beauty, her heroines, from Catherine in A Fare­ world is confined to home, love and well to Arms down to the insipid family. Contessa of Across the River and There is also a "bad woman," Isabel, Into the Trees, are typical of this who is no lady, being a butcher's literary pattern. daughter. She drives her husband, To speak of Contessa Renata as a chases wealth and success, gossips, person is difficult. She is a foil, de­ ruins lives. But when she and her signed to decorate, titillate and enrich husband are finally faced with the the peculiar masculine world of Hem­ failure of all their schemes, Isabel ingway. Here masculinity means love states succinctly the role of the wife of war and violence, a childish mysti- 4 Masses & Mainstream cism about killing and-by way of wHERE the heroine is not com- the cultural side of life-a ludicrous pletely submissive, love becomes preoccupation with the refinements a battle for power.