Abstract

Marriage, in fiction even more than in life, has been the woman's adventure, the object of her quest, her journey's end. Contemporary fiction modulates the formula in one respect: the abandonment of marriage replaces the achievement of it. While it is obvious what these fictional women detest in marriage, it is not always clear what they desire. How, indeed, might clarity be expected about an institution whose success depends so much upon woman's failure at autonomy? So the women split: Kinflicks, Small Changes, The Women's Room, Loose Ends, The Oracle—these are merely representative of a long list. What is new in these books is that we are seeing marriage at all—seeing it, moreover, from a woman's point of view. "What about Norm?" the narrator asks in The Women's Room; "Who is he, this shadow man, this figurehead husband?"1 In fact, who Norm is, who all the husbands are, is clear: those who need someone to take care of their domestic, cooking, cleaning, sexual, breeding needs while they are out attending to civilization and their own appreciation of life. Even the least intelligent husbands realize that a change in marriage profound enough to satisfy the fleeing wives would profoundly alter the foundation of that conservative community, the family. Freud had urged women not to interfere with man in his pursuit of civilization; and this is the way it is, the way men want it to be. · 1. Marilyn French, The Women's Room , p. 193. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, professor of English at Columbia University, is the author of, among other works, Toward a Recognition of Androgyny. Her book, Reinventing Womanhood, includes parts of this present essay