The Incorporation of Ideas in Fiction

 The latest email from Literary Hub offers an excerpt from Fiona Mozley's novel "Hot Stew," which is described as all about wealth, inheritance, gender and power.  Well, except for gender, that sounds a bit like "The Forsyte Saga," by John Galsworthy, published in 1922. 

But what interested me about the excerpt was Ms Mozley's decision to include a couple of provocative ideas in the middle of an episode of tangled personal relationships.

The first is sociopolitical in nature: whether private charity is good for society or simply serves to preserve for a longer time than might otherwise be the case income inequalities.

In the except, a man named Bastian asks a woman named Glenda how a woman named Laura was doing:

“She’s well. She hates her job though.” “Where does she work?”

“At some kind of charity. They treat her like shit but are constantly going on about how grateful she should be for working in such a friendly environment, and how they’re doing a really good thing by paying her a salary rather than getting her to give her time for free. She wants to leave as soon as she can.”

“What does she want to do?”

“I don’t think she’s fussy. I think in an ideal world she’d be working for some great political campaign with someone amazing she really believes in. But how on earth is she going to find one of those? And, you know, how many people actually get to do a job they like?”

“But isn’t working for a charity a bit like that? I mean, isn’t she already working for a good cause.”

Glenda looked at him as if he’d just vomited.

“Not really,” she explained quietly, as if so embarrassed by what he had just said she didn’t want anyone at the neighboring tables to hear her set him right. “Charity is inherently reactionary, isn’t it? It puts the onus on individuals rather than the collective. It relies on certain individuals having large amounts of disposable income. I think Laura would rather pursue political solutions to the world’s problems rather than charitable ones.”

“Oh right,” Bastian replied.

So there's an idea readers can stop and think about if they wish, or possibly just dismiss Glenda as perhaps an old student lefty who never got over the utopian ideology that tends to go with it.

The second idea is related to the growing acceptance, in some corners of society at any rate, of something along the lines of gender fluidity -- the notion that people naturally have aspects of masculinity and femininity and can slip back and forth between them -- and/or to the notion that stereotyping by outward display is out of date,

Here, the character identified as Bastian, is watching his current live-in partner, a woman named Rebecca, get dressed:

Bastian thinks that tights are strange and he tells Rebecca as much. Then he says, “Isn’t it weird that men and women wear different clothes.”

“Weird how?”

“Just strange. Like, it’s one of those things that you become so used to, you don’t ever think to question it, but then sometimes, for instance, just now watching you put on those tights, you realize it’s kind of bizarre.”

“You could say that about anything,” Rebecca replies. It is sometimes difficult to read her expression and tell whether she finds something humorous or exasperating. On this occasion, he suspects both. “Would you like to wear women’s clothes, Bastian?”

“Not especially. They seem kind of uncomfortable. Especially tights. It’s just that it’s strange that I’m not allowed to. Or, rather, I am allowed to, but it would be perceived as a dramatic statement about my identity when actually, when you think about it, why should anyone care?”

“How radical of you.” This time, she is making fun of him, but he thinks it’s in a friendly way. She goes back to the kitchen and Bastian hears her pour some coffee from the cafetière into her thermos flask and screw on the lid.

Well, there was a story in a local paper the other day about seven-year-old triplets wanting to petition Costco, the warehouse store, not to separate girls and boys clothes.

Women, have, of course, long appropriated menswear. Fashion designers have tried on many occasions to push men the other way -- without success. But perhaps such notions will become more acceptable than in the past.

A New Yorker Short Story for Our Time by Graham Swift

 Graham Swift's story "Blushes," published in the Jan. 11, 2021 New Yorker, is a tale for our time, not because it is set in the current coronavirus pandemic, but because it is all about the uncertainties of gender.

The protagonist of the story is a lonely, retired doctor who has volunteered to go back to work in the prevailing crisis.  His second wife -- "the love of his life" -- died two years previously and neither marriage resulted in children. And his mother, to whom he was exceptionally devoted, is also deceased.

On the day of the story, as he drives to work, earlier than necessary, along silent suburban roads, his thoughts revert to his childhood as they often do on such occasions.  This time, he remembers an incident when he was 10 years old, sick in bed with his delightful mother stroking a foot or knee as a doctor examines him.  It was just after his birthday party.

The doctor say's the boy's illness is not hard to identify: scarlet fever.

 "Then his mother said, with a sly kind of smile, 'Unless he's just blushing.'"

The doctor, readers are told, "couldn't have known what special meaning this had. If his mother had been given to winking, she might at this point have winked."

After the doctor concludes his examination, declares it a minor case and writes a prescription, he gives some instructions among which is the following:

"As for blushing, young man, I can't cure that. You'll have to take care of that by yourself."

Although Swift's story is appropriately far from explicit in this delicate matter -- we are now back in about 1948 -- the source of the boy embarrassment, or even shame, stemmed from an incident in which his gender identity was called into question when he was teased by a woman who evidently had certain suspicions..

The young man is clearly a "mother's boy." His father, who soon divorces his mother, is depicted as uninterested and there is a hint his mother is unable to have another child -- perhaps the daughter she was hoping for.

His birthday party was in the afternoon of a working day and other mothers were the only grownups. The children were both boys and girls -- the girls and the mothers all wearing "party frocks." While there is no precise definition of a "frock," one can say with confidence that it is a dress that departs from the strictly utilitarian, sometimes significantly. You know one when you see one. It radiates desirable femininity,

The frock his mother wore, for instance, was "a mass of swirling red blooms on white, and in a delicate waft of perfume."

There was a moment "when the mothers all claimed him" and one wanted to have him -- like a piece of cake.   And as she said it, a piece of the cake she was eating fell into the plunge of her cleavage, the neckline of her own floral dress cut low.

"So come on, Jim, you've got to tell us ... which one is your favorite? ... Which party frock?"

Confused -- was the woman talking about just a dress, or a girl in a particular dress? -- Jim doesn't know how to answer and begins blushing.  With relief, he is gently saved from further questioning by his mother.

But his thoughts, about "party dresses, rustling, pressing, whispering around him" left him understanding that "for a moment, he'd been claimed by the women, even made to feel he belonged to them," and "he'd even seemed to see everything through their eyes."

Still driving along, Jim Cole,  ponders what is means to "blush like a girl."  Or a boy. And what about "that vexing question" the woman had put to him? Had it meant "that life itself might be a great choosing of girls. Girls! How delightful. What happiness."

Or, readers might easily suppose, had the woman --a certain Mrs. Simms -- perceived what we might now call a certain degree of gender fluidity within Jim and with her teasing, put her finger on it. Had he picked out a certain frock at the party as a favorite, would the next question have been would he like to wear it? Would he have liked to have been one of those delightful girls, or just like them, seeing the world as they did?"

The look his mother had on her face when she had told the doctor "unless he is just blushing" was meant for him, the boy had realized. She, too, knew and was happy with his latent femininity. It would make him a better person as a boy and a man, she no doubt thought and she was evidently right.

In the usual New Yorker author interview,  Summers is, in effect, asked the wrong question: what drew him to writing a story set in the coronavirus crisis, and in response he talks rather vaguely about ghosts, eventually explaining that "ghost worlds, lost worlds" became the atmosphere of the story.

The interviewer doesn't press him to explain how his character felt drawn into the world of women amid all the frocks, and Summers doesn't himself go there on  his own during the interview. That's a disappointment, but no disaster.

I think one can easily imagine the nature of at least some of the ghosts the author had in mind.

More About Gender and Gender Roles

Gender issues obviously loom large for writers.

What makes a male or female character convincing in terms of personality and behavior?  It's a question that appears to be increasingly interesting -- and perhaps more problematic --  in the age of gender and occupational fluidity.

A couple of very recent articles, one in the Washington Post, and the other in the New York Times, shed some interesting light on this issue. Both are authored by writers.

In the first, "I love being a stay-at-home dad. And I still struggle with what it says about me as a man," Jason Basa Nembec, with commendable candor, agonizes on Father's Day over his decision to put his wife's lucrative career first. Intellectually, he's fine with it, but in his gut, it feels all wrong. He wishes masculinity could be "redefined."

A complementary article, "One Year on Testosterone," suggests it may not be easy.  In it, the author, Linden Crawford, a person born as a woman who eventually discovers she is gay, begins taking testosterone because she wants to experience what it does for one even though she isn't interested in making a full transition. As a result, she begins to acquire some rather classic "alpha male" characteristics, perhaps of the sort Mr. Nembec above is trying to shed.

Nembec has a PhD in English with a focus on creative writing, but was unable to land a full-time teaching position at a university. "If I let myself think about it, I felt like a failure," he says. So he agreed to accommodate his wife's successful career in the retail industry by staying home and taking care of first one young daughter and then a second as well.

Although "an amazing privilege," the role has not squared well with Nembec's underlying makeup, which he appears to ascribe to cultural influences as opposed to human nature.

"Inside, I was starting to struggle big-time with my identity, measuring myself against some old-school societal notion of what makes a successful man"  -- most notably, in his view, that a man should provide for his family.  "It's a narrow notion of masculinity that I don't even believe in, yet can't fully break free from.  Who knows what cultural mash-up of school friends, TV, movies and whatever else even built it." 

Nembec tries to "reinvent himself" as a bartender but finds he can't work the necessary hours because of domestic needs and more than two-years into his unconventional stay-at-home role, "still sometimes feels deeply ashamed for not working to bring more income into our bank account."

"Unfortunately, shame doesn't hit me on a logical level. It's an internal voice that quickly gets visceral. It his me in the gut. It radiates out from my torso like a wound, sometimes twisting the tension in my neck into a migraine headache, sometimes bringing me to tears, sometimes both."

The bottom line: Nembec doesn't want to change. Rather, he wants the world to view masculinity, and, in particular, what it means to be strong, in a different light and then he'll be able to feel better about himself.

Turning to Crawford, who I have (with my apologies)  referred to as "she" or "her" (because Crawford's preferred "they" is too confusing for most readers), it all started with a desire to experience what having a mustache might be like. That, in turn, eventually led to curiosity about taking testosterone in order to be bigger and stronger.

"What I wanted was virility, and I was afraid to admit it," Crawford says, while at the same time conceding she didn't want to become ugly and "felt guilty for squandering my feminine beauty and grace" even though she says she never identified with such traits.

So, while Nembec feels shame about failing to live up to conventional notions of masculinity in order to accommodate other priorities, Crawford experiences guilt about throwing away conventional notions of feminine appeal in pursuit of goals that conflict with such traits.

Shrugging off warnings of adverse reactions, Crawford begins applying a gel containing a low dose of testosterone and finds her physical strength and stamina soar.  

Most significantly perhaps, in view of current criticisms of "toxic masculinity," Crawford says: "It's a bit disturbing to observe that the more masculine I feel, the freer I feel to do what I please, and not to do what merely pleases others."

The phrase "free to do what I please" brings  to mind Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, and Jeffrey Epstein among a host of other conventional males, both contemporary and over the course of history, and in fiction as well as in life.

As she continues taking testosterone, Crawford finds she smiles less, finds it harder to cry, experiences more prolonged periods of irritation and experiences a sense of justified anger that is both empowering in the sense of being a call to action, but at the same time disturbing in the sense that it is a trait women don't generally enjoy.

"I am grateful to be more in touch with my anger, but also outraged that my sense of entitlement to such a basic emotion correlates with the amount of testosterone in my bloodstream."

There's a lot to think about here -- for readers, for writers and even for the authors of the two referenced articles -- since a lot what these authors discuss appears to be unresolved,

In addition, there is what Crawford calls "gender panic" among the general public -- emotions that set in when someone can't clearly identify another person as a male or female.

"I face gender panic constantly in my daily life and my work as a bartender," Crawford says. "Since it threatens my sense of safety as well as my rapport with customers, I've learned to monitor its progression carefully."

That's an interesting statement because a trait that runs far stronger in women than in men is a sense of vulnerability. So despite her testosterone-induced added strength, stamina and virility, Crawford retains a key underlying attribute of femininity.