Mary McCarthy
CHARACTERS IN FICTION
In Belgrade, the other day, an interviewer asked me
what book I thought best represented the modern American
woman. All I could think of to answer was:
Madame Bovary.
It occurred to me afterwards that I might have named
AI
ain
Street
or Henry James's
Portrait of a Lady.
What else? I
tried to 'remember women in American books. Hester Prynne,
Daisy Miller, Scott Fitzgerald's flappers and Daisy in
The Great
Gatsby,
Temple Drake in
Sanctuary,
Dos Passos' career women,
Ma Joad in
The Grapes of Wrath.
But since then? It was like
leafmg through a photograph album and coming, midway, on
a sheaf of black, blank pages. Was it possible that for twenty–
five years no American woman had had her likeness taken?
"Submit a clear recent photo," as they say in job applications.
But there was none, strange as it seemed considering the domi–
nant role women are supposed to play in American life.
So I tried the experiment with men. The result was almost
the-same. Captain Ahab, Christopher Newman in
The American,
Caspar
Goodwood, Adam Verver, the wicked Gilbert Osmond,
Babbitt, Elmer Gantry; Gatsby, Mac and Charley Anderson
in
Dos Passos, Jason in
The Sound and the Fury,
Colonel Sut–
phen
in
Absalom, Absalom,
Flem and Mink Snopes, Studs Loni–
gan.
After
that, nothing, no one, except the Catholic priests of
J.
F. Powers, the bugler Prewitt in
From Here to Eternity,
and
Henderson in
Henderson the Rain
King.
Someone might see this as a proof of the conformity of
modern American life; there are no people any more, it might be
