Appalachia in Lisa Alther's Novels

FEATURED AUTHOR—LISA ALTHER Appalachia in Lisa Alther's Novels______ Kathleen H. Grover IN HER INTRODUCTION TO THE 1996 PRINTING of her 1975 novel Kinflicks, Lisa Alther states that Kinflicks was "sparked by a dilemma" she had noted in herself and her friends in the 1960s: How could a person satisfy at once both the need for safety and security and the need for change and adventure? Stated in terms of sexual politics, how could an individual integrate the stereotypically female side of the psyche, the nest-builder, so to speak, with the "male" freebooter? (ix) She goes on to describe herself as "someone who explores cultural stereotypes in each of her novels, saying that the themes of "Kinflicks have preoccupied . . . [her] ever since." She considers the most important of these "the concept of androgyny and the necessity for each person to develop both the masculine and feminine sides of his or her psyche in order to achieve sanity" (xiii). Not only in Kinflicks but also in Original Sins (1981) and Five Minutes in Heaven (1995), Alther uses characters from Appalachia to explore cultural stereotypes. Although some of these characters remain in their hometowns and become stunted by the roles they accept, others explore options more readily available outside the region—for example, New England, New York, and Paris—to develop their psyches, with varying degrees of success. Alther comments on "the note of ambivalent optimism" at the end of Kinflicks, saying, "[T]here is every reason to hope that ... [Ginny Babcock] will create a new paradigm, preserving what was positive from the past without sacrificing present ambitions and aspirations" (xiv). That note of optimism sounds again in Original Sins, in the lives of Emily Prince and Donny Tatro, and in Jude, the protagonist of Five Minutes in Heaven. Ginny Babcock in Kinflicks, born to a family of wealth and privilege, rejects the lifestyle of her mother, who has sacrificed herself to meet her husband's and children's needs. Yet Ginny defines herselfin Hullsportby roles valued by others: first as the flag-swinging beauty queen and girlfriend of Joe Bob Sparks, star of the high school sports teams, and 23 second as the moonshine-swigging, rebellious "woman" ofcrippled misfit Clem Cloyd. She escapes to college in Boston, where she adopts other roles, trying on and rejecting identities reflected in her often-changing clothing and hair styles. She periodically departs and returns home in a dizzying succession of disguises—a black cardigan buttoned up the back and a too-tight straight skirt and Clem Cloyd's red silk Korean windbreaker when she left home for college in Boston; a smart tweed suit and horn-rim Ben Franklin glasses after a year at Worthley; wheat jeans and a black turtleneck and Goliath sandals after she became Eddie Holzer's lover and dropped out of Worthley; a red Stark's Bog Volunteer Fire Department Women's Auxiliary blazer after her marriage to Ira Bliss. (Kinflicks 19) After her marriage, Ginny recognizes the influence her parents continue to wield. "[I] realized some time back that even when I wasn't living the life they had reared me for, I was still reacting against them; so that how I'd lived had never yet been a pure decision of what I really wanted" (KinflicL· 389) Ginny's dying mother finally releases her. Mrs. Babcock thinks, "Parents expected too much of children; it was unfair to use them, as she now recognized she herself had been used, to fulfill parental ambitions or philosophies." She says, "I don't know what you should do, Ginny. ... You must do as you think best" (KinflicL· 418). Ultimately, after her mother dies and her own feeble attempts at suicide fail, Ginny realizes that "[apparently shewas condemned to survival" and heads out, "to gowhere shehadno idea" (KinflicL· 503). AsAltherhas said, Ginnybuilds upon her past and is learning to fulfill her own ambitions. In Original Sins, The Five, children who grow up together in Newland, Tennessee, a town remarkably like Hullsport, deal with the conflicts implicit to the roles assigned to them by their community in differingways. Sally Prince, a child ofwealth and position, andJed Tatro, from a mill worker's...