“How to Save Your Own Life,” Erica Jong
Jong’s sequel to “Fear of Flying” had a lot of promise: Isadora, the protagonist, has just come back from a month-long affair to take stock of her life and her marriage. The result is a rather disappointing one. Isadora is now a best-selling author, she has some fame and money, and she can do anything she wants. It’s disappointing because for all her talk about being alone, and being independent, what she ends up doing is leaving her marriage not for herself, but for yet another man. Although this book, along with the first one, was sexually explorative and gave many women a voice for their needs and desires, the ending lacks power. It lacks humanity. Maybe in the 70s the answer was to run from man to man, but honestly I was hoping that it wasn’t. Even taking into account the historical moment this book lived in, I consider it to be a failure. There is no problem with having a (woman) protagonist ending up alone; lord knows it happens to male protagonists all the time. Jong had the power to change the narrative and emerge from her novel with a new voice for women, and instead chose to remain in the fold.
“The Age of Innocence,” Edith Walker
If you’ve never read either “The Age of Innocence” or “The House of Mirth” by Edith Wharton, GO NOW. Wharton is like the better, but much more underrated version of, Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte. Not kidding. I’m not wont to say that the American version is better than the European one (I hardly ever do actually) but in this case it’s true. Wharton loved to expose the society in which she lived as base, cruel, and sometimes vulgar, and this novel is no exception. Archer, a dashing young socialite, is about to marry May, who everyone approves of, but ends up falling in love with her almost-divorced cousin Ellen. Ellen is recently returned from Europe and although to her face everyone is kind, behind her back they are vicious. Archer struggles from before his marriage until two years into his marriage with wanting to leave May, but is unsuccessful as the forces of society pull him back in each time he tries to escape.