Three stories I read recently
may – or may not - have fulfilled the requirements of ‘feminist’ and
‘politics’. Perhaps, as one writer said, they should be “chart[ing] the story as one of progress beyond
falsely boundaried categories and identities.” (Hemmings 2005, p. 116). All of these three used literary
perspective as ‘third person omniscient’, which were the predominance of short
stories.
Exotic Pleasures, written by Peter Carey in 1979, was futuristic,
yet contained many recognisable props. His literary device used all of the first
page describing Lilly Danko, telling about her as we should know her. The
principals of this tale were the pregnant Lilly and her husband, Mort, looking
for work. That similar possibility was “now complimented by a range of
alternate entities, including intergovernmental organisations, public and
private corporations, universities and scientists, and even individual space
entrepreneurs.” (Freeland 2013, p. 10). Domesticity wasn’t predominantly
included – “culturally imposed patterns of male power and female powerlessness”
(Donovan 1991, pp. 451-452) - yet Lilly knitted as she waited for her husband.
They had an old car (how old was the Chevrolet?), yet they visited a space
employer at the Kennecott Interstellar Space Terminal (how futuristic?). The
story seemed to follow the very old genre – woman married to man who is in
charge.
The space story seemed
to push story-politics about how space is sold as ‘personal growth’, yet it
doesn’t invest in this. Pasco said that many short story writers “hedge on definitions
major traits, on just about everything having to do with story as a genre”
(Pasco 1991, p. 407), and that’s what Carey did in his tale. However, a reader
may not have accepted this as a futuristic tale if they had taken into account
all the props without looking at the Interstellar Space Terminal. In fact, even
motels, schools and shopping centres were old genre – from current time dying
politics.
Torr,
who wrote about the “multiplicity of general social, political and
economic factors that exist and could be examined as part of an investigation
of the texts’ broader contexts”, claimed that feminist authors should be “aspiring
to find out what actually has been going on in academic feminism.” (Torr
2007, p. 65). Exotic Pleasure, written by a man, was
still very difficult to read if one wanted to examine which gender controlled
it, and even difficult when the bird, one of the principals in the tale, was an
alien.
Serpents was historical. Initially, Eleanor Dark,
writing in 1959, used her literary device as talk about snakes: where they came
from; comparison to Eva and Adam’s serpent in the bible; known by scientists as
‘squamata’. When first reading the tale one could get frustrated that it
appeared to be a scientific essay and not a tale. Males were referred to by
Dark as the “further decree of perpetual enmity between men and snakes”, and
yet “sons of Adam are inclined to be tolerant of carpet snakes” whilst
“daughters of Eve, on their own ground, are less forbearing...” By the second
page of the tale, Dark acknowledged the women’s “gentle sex” became “savage”
when snakes were around (Dark, p. 193).
Dark used italics in
her writing, to express the detail of the women’s language: “I just don't like snakes, and I will not have them in the house...” (passionately), and “I can
never... get used to the way they climb!'”
(distastefully), and “I might have put my hand
on it!” (indignantly). She wrote far too many ‘first’ pages about
snakes-men-women and what could be said-done-happened. Until page 196, the tale
wasn’t even really told: three pages for the actual tale! It possibly became
amusing then, if the reader had been a male. But if a reader was female, even
feminist, what happened in this tale would have made her anxious-upset-angry as
the husband spread the time out whilst he was looking for a ‘weapon’. Feminists
would have thought that he was a
ridiculous male: he had ignored his wife’s fear of snakes!
Brayshaw said
“...[Dark] created works which both perfectly reflect their own time and remain
equally readable eighty years later.” (Brayshaw 2017, online). This tale wasn’t
political, yet the tale of Sue fighting physically with the snake was certainly
timely when it was written, and still timely now.
‘Brusque’ on Bondi is
‘normal’ these days as the area around this beach is filling with immigrants
and tourists who, maybe, still think of the Cronulla riots even at the other
end of Sydney. But Hospital wrote this in 1990, and maybe Cronulla had followed
this Bondi tale full of the brusque
behaviour and drug needles. As children, Leigh and Cass were brought up in
religious families surrounded with biblical stories, so where they were in the
tale is far away from that. Cass is married, but Leigh isn’t. Their behaviour
was not ‘feminist’, but was very different than with their parents. Leigh lived
her own life using men, while Cass sometimes wondered about her (male) partner.
Feminism seems to accord many young women now.
Men on the beach saw
themselves as Tarzan – “superlative athletic
physiques” – and (could have) thought that “[b]lacks are basically stupid and
superstitious, foreigners are evil, but the human race is saved through the
power of a strong white man... striding powerfully around to save (white?)
civilisation from evil.” (West 2000, p.3). West also wondered “Do men living an
area such as Bondi in which there is much attention to men’s bodies behave
differently from men in other locations?” (West 2000, p. 9). Yet
fighting on the beach is similar to fighting outside bars, in a mall, or in any
place where discrimination, prejudice and intolerance is seen but is not
understood.
A “literary work offers the reader only an experience of
reading that literary work.”, if we wanted to – or needed to – believe a
writer. (Donnelly 2019, p. 12). This was reiterated by Samuels: “Modern short
stories are characterized by their fragmentation and lack of
resolution.” (Samuels 1996, p. 87). Many short stories do very well within
their literal perspective, but those which miss out will not maintain their
readers.
Short
stories
Carey, P. 1979, “Exotic
Pleasures”, War Crimes, pp. 211-240,
University of Queensland Press, Brisbane.
Dark, E. 1959,
“Serpents”, The Penguin century of Australian stories (2000), pp. 192-199, Viking, Ringwood
Victoria.
Hospital,
J.T. 1990, “Bondi”, Isobars, pp.
68-81, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane.
References
Brayshaw, M. 2017, “The Quiet Brilliance of Eleanor
Dark”, accessed 16/05/2019, http://australianwomenwriters.com/2017/08/the-quiet-brilliance-of-eleanor-dark/
Donnelly, M. 2019, “The Cognitive Value of Literary Perspectives”, The
Journal of Aesthestics and Art Criticism, Vol. 77, Iss. 1, University at Buffalo, N.Y.
Donovan, J. 1991, “Women and the Rise of the Novel: A
Feminist-Marxist Theory”, Signs, Vol.
16, No. 3, pp. 441-46, The University of Chicago Press.
Freeland,
S. 2013, “Outer space technology and warfare: Pandora’s Box”, Aviation and Space Journal, Vol. 21,
Bologna, Italy.
Hemmings, C. 2005,
“Telling Feminist Stories”, Feminist
Theory, Vol. 6, Iss. 2, pp. 115–139, Sage
Publications, London.
Pasco, A.H.
1991, “On Defining Short Stories”, New
Literary History, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 407-422, The Johns Hopkins University
Press, Baltimore, Maryland.
Samuels, S.
1996, “Dislocation and Memory in the Short Stories of Janette Turner Hospital”,
Journal of Modern Literature, Vol.
20, No. 1, pp. 85-95, Indiana University Press.
Torr, R.
2007, “What’s wrong with aspiring to
find out what has really happened in academic feminism’s recent past?”, Feminist Theory, Vol. 8, Iss. 1, pp.
59-67, Sage Publications, London.
West, P. 2000, From Tarzan to the
Terminator: Boys, men and body image, A work-in-progress paper, University
of Western Sydney.
