Never Too Young for Feminism

by Songül Arslan

I happened across Erica Jong's name quite a few times in various places before I ever thought of reading her work. I knew that she was a feminist, and even today it seems that the word "feminist" is a bit of a dirty word with strange connotations for me. During my studies I never had the opportunity to read any of her writings, so it was not until recently, after a few years of professional life, that I sat down with one of her books.

Jong was born in 1942 in New York, into an intellectual and artistic family. Her father was a painter and young Erica caught the painting bug from him early on. As a small child she painted beside him at a child-size canvas he had set up for her. Her childhood was spent in an environment that encouraged her artistic side and let her creativity blossom.

While Jong received a great deal of support and encouragement from her family, she was also influenced by the mood of the times in which she grew up. She was witness to her mother, and indeed all women, being denied a good many of the rights that we take for granted now. Seeing her mother's sacrifice, and resultant anger, impacted her strongly. She was aware of the fact that women were treated differently by society than men were, and that they were not supposed to aspire to, or even to want to aspire to, the roles and rights that lay in the domain of men. In time this awareness grew to become the feminist fire that we associate with her name today.

Jong started out as a poet and has published a number of volumes of poetry, but it was her 1973 novel, Fear of Flying that made her famous. The book was an international bestseller, translated into more than twenty languages. It is widely considered to be erotic, although I did not personally find any shocking elements in it. Perhaps it was revolutionary in the seventies, though, when considering its descriptions of sexuality.

The book's main character is Isadora Wing, wife of a dependable analyst. Isadora is drawn to him because he meets her need for stability. When she travels with him to Europe for a convention she meets a flamboyant man, also an analyst, who is quite the opposite of her husband. She falls in love with him and a fiery liason ensues, and ultimately she must choose between her husband and her lover.

The crux of Isadora's dilemma is that she wanted the best of both the men in her life, and it seems to me that all women can understand that feeling. We want our lovers to be reliable and rock-steady, but we also long for all-consuming passion. We want it all, and we want it all to come in one package.

Jong chronicles Isadora's trials and tribulations with a great deal of wit. Her descriptions are so detailed and full of understanding for her heroine's predicament that the reader is well able to visualize the events as they unfold. Certain scenes had me laughing out loud despite the seriousness of the subject matter.

The truth is that I thought Jong's writing would be old-fashioned and outdated and that her feminism would be as dry as old cake. Instead, I found Fear of Flying quite dynamic and modern. The psychological dilemmas women faced in the seventies are the same as the ones we face today, as reading any young women's magazine will tell you. I realized as I read the book that women are never too young to read Erica Jong's work and we all can be empowered by her words: "You take your life in your hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame."