Tradition and Independence in Jewish Feminist Novels

Abstract

More than fifty years ago, Anzia Yezierska, a struggling immigrant writer, depicted anguish of poor Jewish women, triply burdened by heritage, gender, and class. In her best novel, Bread Givers (1925), Yezierska passionately portrays trials of Sara Smolinsky who battles an environment more impoverished, sexist, and tyrannical than most contemporary heroines confront. Determined to survive with dignity, Sara acquires an education, career, and husband, and finally achieves partial reconciliation with her authoritarian father. Such resolutions, however, have been rare in Jewish-American novels. In fact, before seventies, Jewish women writing fiction generally neglected Yezierska's concerns. Memorable stories such as Tillie Olsen's Tell Me a Riddle and Grace Paley's Faith tales poignantly reveal feminine predicaments, but they were not representative of literature. As Sarah Blacher Cohen points out, not until the revival of feminism in late sixties did Jewish feminist authors emerge. Suddenly a spate of novels by writers such as Sue Kaufman, Gail Parent, Ann Roiphe, and Erica Jong appeared in New York Times book reviews and on best seller lists. Flippant in tone, middle class in setting, novels such as Diary of a Mad Housewife, Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York, and Falling Bodies lack intensity and purpose of Yezierska's work, but their message is also serious. Beneath glibness and bravado are confused Jewish women uncertain of their roles and goals. Where Sara Smolinsky determinedly combined marriage and career, these protagonists, bereft of tradition and love, drift towards isolation, insanity, and suicide. Because conventional panaceas, husband, home, and even profession, seem unavailable or unsatisfying, Jewish women become bitter, assailing men and their heritage. But at least three recent novels, which I will analyze in this article, attempt to transcend anger. In Ann Roiphe's Long Division, Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, and Susan Fromberg Schaeffer's Falling, heroines eventually acknowledge their Judaism, comprehend their predicament, and seek positive solutions. While Long Division and Fear of Flying are light