Fear of Flying: More Than a Feminist Novel :: Feminism Feminist Women Criticism

hero-worship of fugitive More Than a Feminist Novel The fears of Isadora Her religion (Semi-Jewish), her bed life (second hubby, seventh analyst Bennett), her gender (a woman in the States In the sixties), her career (Writer one book), sex (are women supposed to ravish that?), her mother (Jude, an artist who danced naked in France), her sisters (all married, with at least(prenominal) twain children apiece), her children (none), her name (Isadora White? Isadora Wing? Isadora White Stollerman Wing Goodlove?) and flying Isadora has a fear of flying. Some would say that Fear of Flying , by erica Jong is merely a feminist novel. It is, but its more than that. Fear of Flying is a novel about a woman in attend of her name and the source of her fears it is a novel about inner conflict. The master(prenominal) character of the novel is Isadora, a woman in her early mid-thirties in the late sixties. What begins as a work related trip to Vienna with her analyst husband ends as a jour ney fill with personal revelations. At the conference Isadora develops an infatuation which fuels her need to discover what is vituperate with her. Traveling throughout Europe with a man who is not her husband she discovers her true self through her complete loss of security. Therein lies the dealer irony of Fear of Flying the journey that the main character takes in order to gain the traits that she sees in her heroines only leads her to find that they were hidden deep down herself. Isadora is the charicature of irony itself. The opening chapter sets the tone for the entire novel, which is written like a conversation with ones analyst casual but intimate. Her odyssey, in fact, begins on a plane full of psychoanalysts. As she puts it shed been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh. (p. 1) This is a great example of Isadoras outwardly nonchalant views of her own problems. Her own view of her life and her inner monologue pull the reader into her literal and symbo lic fear of flying and her womb-to-tomb struggle with them. From the beginning she shares with us thirteen years of analysis and counting, so far it is the 336 pages in which we watch her slowly untangle her own conflicts that show the readers the lesson which we were think to learn. Isadora is an extremely intelligent character.