Regal Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle was the most talked-of ‘learned lady’ of the Restoration period, 1660-1688. She wrote in her own name in a period when most women writers remained anonymous. In her preface to Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, 1664, Cavendish writes that woman’s wit may equal that of man, and women may be able to learn as easily as men. Cavendish argued that the only difference was that men had more opportunity to educate themselves. This caused a sensation. Critics thought her mad. If Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was a groundbreaker in her time, so too, was Erica Jong when she stunned and delighted readers with her jaw-dropping, powerful feminist voice:
We found ourselves always torn between the mothers in our heads and the women we needed to become simply to stay alive. With one foot in the past and another in the future, we hobbled through first love, motherhood, marriage, divorce, careers, menopause, widowhood —never knowing what or who we were supposed to be, staking out new emotional territory at every turn—like pioneers.
—Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir
So wrote Erica Jong, one of my literary heroes. I never realized we lived such parallel paths until researching for this blog: “Russian immigrant (grand)parents, intellectual Jewish household, child of privilege, multiple degrees, artistic career, marriage, daughter—and a turbulent relationship with her mother. A Jewish babe and emotional adventurer.” Neely Tucker, The Washington Post (October 7, 2013.)
I was a junior in college when Jong published her groundbreaking, Fear of Flying.” Like her fictional—and heavily autobiographical—heroine, Isadora Wing, I, too, was trying to figure out my identity as the 2nd wave of feminism rolled in. Thanks to Jong, women authors can be irreverent. For author Min Jin Lee (Free Food for Millionaires, 2007), Jong’s Fear of Flying is a “foundational book: It maintains that a woman should be able to say what she wants to say. Erica’s courage still blows me away.” At the time I was too young to think about the chances Jong took. I only knew that it was comforting to find a character who was struggling with the same shift of cultural norms, and it was energizing to read such intelligent humor and confusion.
More from Erica Jong in Fear of Fifty:
“I figure that if I’m confused, you are too. After all, we are the whiplash generation, raised to be Doris Day, yearning in our twenties to be Gloria Steinem, then doomed to raise our midlife sighters in the age of Nancy Reagan and Princess Di. Now it’s Hillary Rodham Clinton thank goodness. But sexism (like athletes’ foot) still flourishes in dark, moist places.”
When I first read Erica Jong,
I think I thought I would never be old.
Here’s to you, Erica Jong!
