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114  8 Les Human Beans? Alienation, Humanity, and Community in Joanna Russ’s On Strike Against God Keridwen N. Luis Joanna Russ’s On Strike Against God (Russ 1980c) is remarkable for its deft intertwining of many themes: not only the overt one of “coming out,” but many intricately (and inevitably) interlaced stories of alienation, a search for community , and rebellion against how our society defines women. These themes are interdependent: how our society defines women leads to alienation leads to a search for a community for the “something-elses of the world” (19). The question of whether lesbians can be women—and, indeed, the related questions of what women are, and whether it is worth being one—are explored throughout the book as Esther, our intellectual narrator, chronicles her experiences of not fitting in with the world. These moments have as much to do with being an intellectual woman as with being a lesbian. The parallel is clear: being a lesbian is no more alienating than being a female English professor . For a lesbian, however, there are moments of joy. In fact, it is through being a lesbian that Esther is able to overcome her alienation from her own gender, and to find a community that includes not only other lesbians, but all women. In chronicling Esther’s journey, Russ makes available a new model—or, as she calls it, a new myth for women who experience a similar desire to go “on strike against god.” Esther provides a demonstration of feminist principles that Russ discusses in her nonfiction work, as well as a reflection of women who had previously been all too invisible. Esther’s story validates and illuminates these experiences. Myths, Gender Roles, and Literary Inversions What kind of story is On Strike Against God? What “literary myths”—to use Russ’s own term—does it employ? Russ, in her 1972 essay “What Can a Heroine Do?” (1995h) argues that the conventional myths of modern literature Luis, Les Human Beans? 115 cannot be successfully used by women to describe their own experiences. She adds that “there seem to me to be two alternatives open to the woman author who no longer cares about How She Fell in Love or How She Went Mad. These are (1) lyricism, and (2) life” (87). After her deconstruction showing how limiting the story of How She Fell in Love is to women writers (and, one presumes, readers), it is thus surprising that the subtitle of this work is “A Lesbian Love Story.” This work, while undoubtedly a love story, subverts the entire genre of heterosexual “love stories,” both because the protagonist falls in love with a woman and because the love story does not end in the conventional way. Jean moves to New Zealand; Esther remains a lesbian. Gender roles cannot be reinforced through their relationship and Esther’s rebellion against female gender roles is a constant throughout the text. Indeed, one could say that the book is more about loving lesbianism than it is about an intense love affair between two women, providing a very different gloss on the phrase “A Lesbian Love Story.” Interestingly, the other “female” literary modes are also present, if in somewhat unconventional forms. How She Went Mad is copiously referenced in the imagery of the text, for example, through the device of Esther’s “demon ,” and her revealing and poetically funny conversations with her imaginary therapist, Count Dracula. But Esther does not, in fact, go “crazy”; Russ provides her with a different option. The mode of the story is lyrical, by Russ’s definition—“the organization of discrete elements (images, events, scenes, passages , words, what have you) around an unspoken thematic or emotional center” (1995h, 87; emphasis in original)—and is also realistic, life-based. Russ notes that “the lyric structure, which can deal with the unspeakable and unembodiable as its thematic center, or the realistic piling of detail . . . may (if you are lucky) eventually add up to the unspeakable, undramatizable, unembodiable action-one-cannot-name” (1995h, 90). Both of these forms are abundantly used in the story. Yet the story also goes beyond them, naming those actions, themes, and struggles. For example, the question of what a woman is comes up again and again as Esther tries to understand just what it is that women are and why anyone would do what “women” do. Through Esther’s reflections, Russ articulates and names this struggle with limited, repressive gender norms. But the name is bad...

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