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PARTISAN REVIEW
inferi ority to man . T he terms were invidious and he drew invidious
cultural conclusions from hi s sound (as I think ) psychobi ological
perceptio n; culturall y he was ho lding the social lin e as it was drawn in
hi s middl e-cl ass Vi enna. Simil arl y alert to bio logical reality but o f a
different cultural day than Freud 's, Erik Erikson spea ks of fema le
" inn er space" as the p sychosexual determinal1l of women 's special
requirements in society; and surely literary hi story confirms the fact
that in the il1lerest of fillin g this inner space women as indi viduals,
women as members of society, and women as writers were and are
p repared to make much sacrifi ce in the rea lm of sp irit. Indeed , even
whil e the banner of female libera ti on fli es hi gh , there a re those of o u r
present-day women novelists who ca rry bio logica l acqui escence to an
extreme of pornographic tedium; th ey had their advan ce scout in the
formidabl e female author of
Th e S tory of
0 , an overtl y pornographi c
novel whi ch ends with its heroine litera ll y reduced to the conditi on o f
an animal led on a chain by her lover. I find thi s a troubling metaphor
for the male-female rela ti onship as it exi sts in society; it would be
preferabl e, I think, tha t a sepa ra tion be made between the acceptance of
sexual differenti a tion , on th e one hand , and, on the o ther, such
personal and social abuse of irrefutabl e bio logical fact. We have been
told in man y litera ry col1lexts tha t style is morality. The style in whi ch
the defea t o f female spirit is p resel1led to us in litera ture is, it seems to
me, in itself a fo rm of moral decision, with large bearin g on the des tiny
of women . Dorothea Brooke in
M iddl emarch
is a hero ine of spirit, or a t
leas t she has that p romise a t the sta rt of the book; her defeat is in the
grand style, its inevita bility faced up to by a writer o f la rge soul and
penetrating intell ect. The defeat of Jo March in
L ittle Women
is no t in
the grand style; too casuall y accompli shed , it is in the style of capitula–
ti on . The defea t of Eri ca Jong's surroga te in
How to Save Y our Own
L ife
is just stylish.
I do no t know if g irl s any longer read
L ittle Women;
it may be tha t
its significal1l life ended with Ka therine Hepburn's movie portraya l of
Jo as a Bryn Mawr g irl. Jo represel1led my own fi rst en counter with a
heroine of spirit; it was a love affair but one tha t ended in devasta ti on
when , a t the end of the book, it was no t Jo but h er in sipid sister Amy
who got Laurie whil e Jo had fobbed off on her tha t old professor with a
beard. For the reader aged nin e or ten thi s outcome o f
L ittle Wom en
established forever a fa tal uncertitude about wha t constituted a success–
ful femininity since it was unmi stakabl e tha t Jo was the vital center o f
the book yet the man I wanted fo r her, which was also of course fo r
myself, preferred Amy's golden curl s to J o's gall al1l brown head . Yet
