On Joanna Russ

7. “That Is Not Me. I Am Not That”: Anger and the Will to Action in Joanna Russ’s Fiction

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7 “That Is Not Me. I Am Not That” Anger and the Will to Action in Joanna Russ’s Fiction Pat Wheeler But holy peanut butter, dear writer . . . do you imagine that anyone with half a functional neuron can read your work and not have his fingers smoked by the bitter, multi-layered anger in it? It smells and smolders like a volcano buried so long and deadly it is just beginning to wonder if it can explode. —James Tiptree, Jr., letter to Joanna Russ In an article written over ten years ago, “Empathic Ways of Reading: Narcissism , Cultural Politics, and Russ’s ‘Female Man,’” Judith Gardiner (1994) says she was “struck not by how fresh it was but by how dated it seemed.” She goes on to say: “This is a heavy-handed treatment of a situation that I now find embarrassing even to recall. It’s hard for me to recapture the fresh moral indignation of that time, its conviction of rightness, the enthusiasm and group solidarity of its feminist anger yet also its despair at patriarchal odds, its effrontery in demanding to overturn all of human history, and its blithe effacement of potentially troubling differences among women” (87). It seems obvious that women’s writing reveals something about the world of women during particular periods and the rage and anger in Russ’s seminal novel certainly keyed into the zeitgeist of radical feminist politics of the day. Russ’s protagonists are frequently angry, even downright unpleasant; they are prepared to risk conflict and even to kill in order to make transgressive crossings to new spaces, to new areas of representation. As Jael says, “Murder is my one way out” (Russ 1975b, 195). The contemporaneous radical readings of Russ’s fictions are, of course, products of their time, but equally, when thirdwave feminists look for new strategies, women’s continued oppression cannot be overlooked. Not all women have achieved agency and Russ’s angry rhetoric still has plenty to say. Sarah Appleton Aguair (2001) contends that in certain feminist fictions the reclamation of “unsavory behavior, flaws, failings and downright nastiness” is essential in order that women are not simply objectified as any other “silenced heroine.” (6) And Clare Watling (1993) argues that 100 Fiction contemporary women writers explore violence, anger, and their relation to sadism so that female readers “might experience certain satisfaction at the victorious conclusions of the exchange” (196, 199). Anger is a unifying force in Russ’s fiction, an oppositional strategy that offers ways of reading and writing that subvert the notion that the female subject is acted upon, rather than active. In her discussion of transgressions and borders, Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) argues that “whatever the ground on which one stands, whether the center or the margin, one faces in each movement an Other/ground which is threatening —the unknown. Only by violating the boundaries of the familiar and proper, risking conflict, can one reach toward connection” (45). Russ transgresses those “familiar and proper” boundaries in her storytelling, in both the subject matter and in the telling of her stories. She uses anger to communicate powerfully women’s sense of alienation, as well as the dissatisfaction that arises out of estrangement and social fragmentation. Russ’s stories are carefully constructed and utilize a full range of emotions and styles in which she explores the ways that women and girls are acculturated into social attitudes . Her writing exemplifies the ways in which anger can be amplified and used to instigate women’s vocalization against oppression and silence. She creates imaginative visions of the strength and intensity of women’s rage that are indispensable to the intellectual and political potency of women’s writing. And she uses the anger of her protagonists and narrators to “move women from unconscious passivity into clarity and the will to act” (Kaye/ Kantrowitz1992,24).InalettertoSusanKoppelman,Russ(1998c)writesabout a young woman’s paper on one of her stories: “I ache for her—because she’s young—but where is her anger? I think from now on, I will not trust anyone who isn’t angry” (63; emphasis in original). Russ’s writing self-consciously keys into the anger that is one of the most powerful forces shaping contemporary women’s writing. Anger will not go away and in Russ’s writing it becomes part of an affirming self-knowledge. Russ’s work displays tangible renderings of anger that makes visible women’s disaffection and feelings of alienation and estrangement...