Review of the novel Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
WRITTEN BY: Dunja Ilic
Fear of Flying depicts a woman's struggle against established (male) notions of herself, but also the struggle against the internalization of those notions. Erica Jong doesn't tell us what we should or shouldn't do or have – like an older, more experienced and braver friend, she tells us that we can do as we please , and that no decision will make us less of a woman, or less valuable.
It's been half a century since Erica Jong's Fear of Flying was first published in America, the cult novel that, if we were lucky, we would have gazed at on the top shelf of our home library, vaguely realizing that it was something that wasn't yet for us, waiting for the moment when we would be old enough to pick it up and grown up enough to read it. And even if we didn't have this book within our reach, we were lucky: Fear of Flying is inextricably linked to the second wave of feminism, and may even have launched it, as Fay Weldon suggests in her foreword to the fortieth anniversary of the first edition, allowing women to speak out about their sexual desire, but also about the broader issue of male-female relations.
Isadora Wing, a Jewish-American woman in her thirties, has unprecedented opportunities for freedom: she is an educated young poet with a diaphragm in her makeup bag and an American Express card in her wallet. She has a husband (already another) who loves her (but doesn’t tell her) and fantasies of “fucking without a lock” (Jong’s phrase, which would become iconic, for a sexual encounter without unnecessary words, without deep emotions, and without feelings of guilt). Isadora Wing (or Erica Jong, because this novel would today be considered autofiction, although this is debatable, since not all of Isadora’s experiences are also the author’s) is like many women – except that they don’t talk about the imperfections of their marriages and their perfect sexual fantasies. Isadora's travels through Europe with a man she meets at a psychoanalytic congress (leaving her husband to wash his socks alone) are enriched by memories of past love and family relationships and witty, satirical formulations of women's dilemmas, such as the choice between the need for security and the need for excitement.
Against the backdrop of psychoanalysis, which sees female lust as hysteria and intellectual aspirations as unattainable, Fear of Flying humorously and realistically depicts a woman's struggle against established (male) notions of herself, but also against the internalization of those notions - a section of the text is devoted to Isadora's attempts, long and painful, even after she had already published a collection of poetry, to convince herself that her erotic writing was valuable, that she was valuable , and to overcome the panic before sending her poems to editors and agents. John Updike, after the novel's publication, commented that the heroine was perhaps a little spoiled, although, like Henry Miller, he was delighted with her. But Isadora Wing is completely transformed, not so much from an unfree woman to a free woman, but precisely from a spoiled, frightened, dependent child to a self-willed adult, neither the perfect housewife nor the perfect feminist heroine.
Although important primarily as a cultural artifact of a particular time (the popularity of the diaphragm is much lower today, and awareness of the rights and opportunities of less beautiful and less white women who do not have American Express at hand is much higher), Fear of Flying is an intelligent, provocative and still relevant book. Half a century after Fear of Flying and the decision of the US Supreme Court to allow federal abortion rights, that same decision has been overturned. Who among us has not felt the pressure to settle down and have children, or to pander to a man who is wrong? Erica Jong does not tell us what we should or should not do or have – like an older, more experienced and braver friend, she tells us that we can do as we please , and that no decision will make us less of a woman, or less valuable.