Book Review – Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
I am really enjoying this book so far. The opening chapters serve up some rudimentary feminism, along with a healthy dose of skepticism aimed at Freudian psychoanalysis. The narrator, Isadora Wing, has grown to objectify men–she wants the “zipless ****”, an experience untainted by expectation or friendship or prior infatuation. She wants something base, something devoid of the emotional and psychological. It is when she becomes better acquainted with men that she loses interest. Her “fear of flying” isn’t restricted to the aeronautical–despite her quasi-feminist convictions and aversion to traditional gender roles, she finds herself trapped in one failed marriage after another.
I remember reading one passage and thinking, “Sad, how it is man’s inclination to conquer woman, and woman’s inclination to conquer the world. What a tragic impasse in the battle of the sexes.” Everywhere Isadora turns, there is a man (a psychoanalyst, a magazine writer or advertiser, a brother-in-law, a husband, et al.) filling her brain with antiquated nonsense to keep her from taking flight and pursuing a life on her own terms. She resists this brainwashing–but, as of page 67, has far from overcome it.
[Added commentary upon finishing the book.]
What I loved most about this story, strangely enough, was its ambiguous ending. Jong doesn’t try to pull any unbelievable sleights of hand in the final chapter to tie up the many loose ends. She doesn’t presume to solve the feminist dilemma through Isadora. Like many women, Isadora will continue to struggle with her sometimes conflicting desires for independence and companionship. She will continue to feel mixed relief and despair when her monthly cycle arrives on time. Most importantly, she will continue to feel an intrinsic emptiness that no husband, baby, career high, or no-strings-attached sexual experience can fill. She is more complex than any one of these individual drives; therefore, it seems inevitable that they will often be at odds with one another. The sum of her parts will always be a bit confused and conflicted.
Her character can be exasperating, if not a bit neurotic (her bout of terror after Adrian leaves her is a tad excessive), but she is struggling constantly against a tide of convention promoted by well-meaning loved ones and associates. Everyone–from her family to her husbands, lovers, psychoanalysts, and friends–conspires to confine her to traditional female roles. Anything else threatens the women who surround her, because it represents not only the unknown, but also that which they dared not do themselves. Anything else threatens the men in her life, who are toiling day and night to keep her and the rest of womankind under their thumbs.
But not all men are as pretentious and innately chauvinistic as the ones presented in this book. Not all women are as conflicted and lost as Isadora. Still, many of Isadora’s intrinsic struggles will likely resonate with female readers. She can be self-serving, hedonistic, and cruel–but she is hardly the first woman to lose herself in a world where she has ample opportunities, but a learned “fear of flying” that keeps her from pursuing them and detaching herself from toxic relationships.
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