I've spent much of this week immersed in nineteenth century women, so to speak. A business trip to Denver provided me with a rare opportunity to read a novel in one fell swoop. (Ordinarily I read novels during my commute to work--unfortunately, my commute is less than ten minutes long [two subway stops], and so it takes me quite some time to finish each book.) Based on a recommendation from Debbie Atherton (River Writers of Manhattan and friend from Yale), I decided to read Jane Austen’s PERSUASION, her last novel (published posthumously in 1818). Although it’s not the kind of book normally thought of as a page-turner, I couldn’t put it down. I knew that the protagonists Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth would eventually wind up together, but I was eager to find out how that would happen. The psychology of the characters was the most interesting aspect of the book. Each one’s self-doubts, hopes, fears, calculations and miscalculations were fascinating and provided much of the drama. Many scholars apparently consider this Austen’s most mature book--and its maturity is an indication of what the world lost when she died.
I suppose you could say the novel is in some respects gushingly romantic--and maybe I was no better than an addicted Harlequin Romance reader--but it contains enough cynicism, skepticism, and humor to make it something greater than or different from a romance. Whatever the case, I’ve rarely been as thrilled as I was at the moment when the lovers’ shared interest is finally made explicit and all the obstacles thrown in their path melt away. How do I explain my reaction? Was I reacting as a gay man? Are straight men also drawn to the work of Jane Austen?
Good questions, but back to the nineteenth century. The world has certainly evolved in some ways since then. I hope it’s no longer the case that a woman of 28 is seen as barely marriageable and that the thought of a life outside of marriage is beyond tragic. Our heroine is not pathetic in this sense--you know that she would do just fine on her own--but she is clearly the exception in her world and seen by some as quite odd, or sad. We’ve also moved beyond the issue of social rank (in Austen’s case meaning primarily the hierarchy of good versus lesser families--and to some extent wealth), though even in New York in the 21st century I know that some women (and men) factor rank (now meaning primarily occupation, education, wealth, and earning potential) into their consideration of possible mates. (Then again, the contemporary equivalent of social rank--the Social Register--has little to no significance anymore. For example, did you know I was in the Social Register? [Long story.] Do you think more or less of me now? Do you care? Probably not. And I hope not. But am I trying to impress you by mentioning it? Probably. Yes, I’m that pathetic. Another indication of our ambivalence toward social rank today.)
Flash forward 50 or 60 years to the age of Sarah Ruhl’s new play, IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY (at the Lyceum Theatre, presented by Lincoln Center) -- the dawn of the age of electricity. In this fascinating (but less than fully satisfying) play, women apparently are baffled by the treatments they receive from doctors who stimulate them with a new medical invention, the vibrator. These women have never experienced orgasms before. With their tightly corseted and multi-buttoned dresses, they seem to have little familiarity with their own bodies. The men are even less familiar with anatomy. We hear one anecdote (apparently really attributable to John Ruskin) about a man who is horrified and disgusted to discover that his bride has pubic hair, because all of his experience up until then has been based on sculptures, which had no such thing.
Women react differently to this newly discovered phenomenon (the organism). In the process of observing this world, we discover how cut off from each other--and themselves--men and women once were. There is an interesting discussion with a male artist who can’t abide making love to women whose souls aren’t visible in their eyes and prefers (in theory) the companionship of prostitutes if there can’t be anything more than pure physicality between the sexes (though it doesn’t sound as if there’s even much of that in this milieu). In the final scene (SPOILER ALERT), the doctor-husband is stripped naked by his now-orgastic (is that a word?) wife, and we see them attempt to launch a more intimate relationship, in every sense of the term.
Taken together, this novel and this play paint an unflattering picture of the life of women in that century. In Jane Austen’s world we have women whose only real option for either social intercourse or self-definition is marriage (something which requires a great deal of calculation--and luck); meanwhile, on this side of the pond a few decades later, we see women who are almost completely cut off from their own physicality. Would any woman opt for either situation rather than what they confront today? Then again, if we looked at Italy during these same periods, we might see a very different picture of female sexuality.
