518
PARTISAN REVIEW
advanced literature presents madness not only as a metaphor for a
despised civilization or a figurative path of escape from a despised
society but as an actual new Jerusal em in which we should try to gain
citizenship-madness hovers only in the wings of liberated fiction ; it
rarely takes the center of the stage. But I do not think we are meant to
conclude from this that the liberated heroine brings to her efforts of
self-realization an invincible mental steadiness; at most what seems to
be suggested is that the achievement of seJ[hood functions as a helpful
principle in the design of a sound life. In th e fi ction I have canvassed,
both English and American, there are few heroines who have not been
in one or another kind of psychiatric treatment. In addition-what is a
bit unnerving-they put a considerable therapeutic reliance on their
dreams from which th ey take litera l direction; from
Th e Golden
Notebook
onward, in fact, our libera ted heroines tend to be ancient
marin ers of their sleeping lives, sparing the reader no detail of their
night consciousness. It could be that in today 's social life the telling of
one's dreams is fast becoming a substitute for showing peopl e one's
travel photographs.
Then there is the matter of fri endship. Of course fri endship
between women has never had a good name. Now there is the possibil–
ity that, having flushed out the shared enemy, men , women may be
more trusting of each other. But their literature has not yet, to my
knowl edge, put this to much test. What has been produced is a sort of
sacred fount situation: where there is more woman-with-woman
relationship, at least in the form of ritualistic "sisterhood ," there is
apparently less man-woman fri endship-unl ess, that is, the man has
placed himself outside woman's sexual orbit. But, as I say, there is
contradiction here too: for instance, in
Lovers and Tyrants
Francine
Gray proposes fri endship between men and women either free of erot ic
charge or laced with not very attractively presented perversity.
As to what the liberated heroine feels about money, when this
fi ction is not being a women's magazine fi eld-day of consumerism it
reads like Karl Marx 's roster of th e decadent hangers-on of revolution.
Obviously, the more money, the more privilege of class- and this is
also to say, the more sex. It is a time-consuming occupation tha t some
of these women engage in, a ll owing for littl e other ga inful employ–
ment. Too, the upkeep on a dedicated life of sexual completeness is
bound to strain any but the solidest bank account-in addition to the
more familiar routines of the bea uty parlor, there are exercise classes,
unlimited long-distance tel ephone call s
to
absent lovers, unimpeded
transatlantic and transcontinental flights with or to new partners ,
