476
GEORGE ST ADE
Kitsy's experience as the experien ce of particular women (here Kitsy confused–
ly trying to identify with a feminine image from a decidedly masculine movie,
How I Won the War ),
also tran scends sexual categories. Ila and Kitsy
are
women, just as they are privi leged, well-educated, upper-middle class, J ewish,
New Yorkers; but in presenting their
hi~tories
Bergs tein shows a ll of us how
much we've had to endure and how little o f o urselves we've had available for
the task.
It 's a curious tho ugh ha rdly decisive fact tha t a ll three o f these novels have
a dua l protagonist-in Lerman , Ishtar's double identity as housewife and
deity, in Piercy and Bergstein litera ll y two heroines whose fa tes are different.
Maybe this sch izoid habit ma rks a fa irl y ea rl y stage in the emergence of a new
femit:Jine consciousness, as if women writers were no t quite ready to project
their sense o f their condition into a sing le, unequivoca l fictiona l counterpart
who cou ld risk fa ilure, o r fo r tha t ma ller success, without having a stand-by
self ready to bear some o f the poss ibi lities. "Woman ba lancing her roles," as
Lerman says, is a fi gure o f affecting difficulty, to be wa tched with sympathy
and hope. (Can a man say tha t without sounding pa tronizing? ) But in the long
run , I think the goa l may no t be a new "woman 's fiction " as such but a fiction
that can represent the lives of women as pa rt of the genera l li fe o f people. This
wou ld require women writers to write as well abo ut
m en
as George Eliot or (at
her best) Virg inia Woo lf did , as we ll as a few men writers like Ri chardson and
J ames and (a t his bes t) Lawrence have written abo ut women . However imper–
a ti ve it now is fo r women to lea rn to unders tand, accept and trust their iden–
tities as women, this (as they surely know too) will get them on ly ha lf-way
a long the journey, thoug h tha t's a t least as far as men have got, and with a
head start.
Thomas R. Edwards
THE TWO FACES OF DOS PASSOS
THE FOURTEENTH CHRONICLE . Letters and Diaries of John Dos
Passos. Edited byTownsend Ludington. Gambit. $15 .00.
In h is preface to
The Fou rteenth Chronicle
Townsend Ludington
remarks tha t " these letters and diaries should enhance Dos Passos' reputa–
ti on." I hope he is right. Dos Passos's reputation has declined, to put it mildly,
since in 1939 he pub lished
Adventures of a Young Man .
This novel made
perhaps excessively clea r, and to its detriment as a novel, that its author, the
