The Indestructible Woman in Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck by Mimi Reisel Gladstein (review)

98Rocky Mountain Review MIMI REISEL GLADSTEIN. The Indestructible Woman in Faulkner , Hemingway, and Steinbeck. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1986. 139 p. There can be no dispute that in the traditional male canon of modern American literature, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck maintain a firm stronghold. All three writers also maintain a notoriety for the ambivalent nature of their inadequate and often hostile characterizations of women, characterizations that have been condemned by both feminist and nonfeminist critics alike as suggestive either of an inherent misogyny or of an equally unrealistic gyneolatry. Gladstein reiterates these charges, but moves beyond them to suggest a means of "reconciliation " (7) between the two sometimes disparate, sometimes identical positions, offering a comprehensive understanding of their female characters through her concept of the "indestructible woman." Recognizing the paradox between the malevolent bitch and the benevolent Maternal in their works, Gladstein reconciles the two in undeniably mythic terms, terms that she views as reflective of Hemingway's, Faulkner's, and Steinbeck's "basic primitivism" (7). Gladstein asserts that they create a "paradoxical characterization which has drawn criticisms for its deficiencies and yet produced an affirmative type, the indestructible woman, who, like Mother Nature, is sometimes cruel and sometimes kind but always enduring" (8). The concept of the indestructible woman is not new to Gladstein. This study continues her exploration of the idea which she began in the 1970s on Steinbeck. Her discussion of Steinbeck, incidentally, is virtually word for word from her earlier papers published in Steinbeck Quarterly and the Steinbeck Monograph Series. In this work, however, she expands her exploration to include Hemingway and Faulkner, occasionally drawing on all three authors' personal relationships with women (real women who themselves revealed a certain indomitability) who may have influenced the authors' portrayals of and added to their ambivalence toward women. This indomitable quality is what links Faulkner's Dilsey, Miss Habersham, and Dewey Dell; Hemingway's Brett Ashley, Pilar, and Renata; and Steinbeck's Ma Joad, Suzy, and Mordeen together, characters that Gladstein herself confesses are "so physically and psychologically diverse that one is hard put to discover any linking characteristic save for the fact that they are all female" (101). What does tie them together is their underlying mythic nature. Many of these women symbolize the earth goddess or the goddess-bitch, the maternal giver and sustainer of life or the destructive and devouring taker of life. In the chapter on Faulkner, Gladstein divides these "decidedly mythic" female characters into three types: the "bounteous Earth Mother," "fecund and nature bound," such as Lena Grove {Light in August); the "Eternal Feminine" or the Demeter/Persephone aspect, "endlessly perpetuated through mother and daughter," such as Caddy and Quentin II (The Sound and the Fury); in addition, she includes the regional myth of the "southern woman whose fragile looks belie her spine of steel" evident in characters like Miss Jenny DuPre from the Sartoris cycle (105). Steinbeck's women often function as Earth Mothers; Ma Joad (The Grapes of Wrath) is a prime example. They frequently, however, recall the "predominant myth ... of the whore with the heart of gold" (106). Hemingway's heroines, who function on the surface as either love or sex object, display aspects of the "Terrible Mother" — Margot Macomber ("The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"), or "Nurturing Mother" corn goddesses like Catherine Barclay ofA Farewell to Arms (105-06). What ultimately ties these diverse characters together is their ability to survive, their adaptability to the everyday business of life that can be at once trivial or tragic, that instinctual quality that enables them to endure and often to help those around Book Reviews99 them to endure as well. Throughout her discussion, Gladstein focuses on minor as well as major characters to illustrate the pervasiveness of the indestructible woman. By so doing, she allows, by extension, this "type" of character to enter the universal realm of the archetype, one easily extended to other ambivalent female characters appearing throughout the entire American male canon. Gladstein stresses that "[t]hough these authors have thus deprived woman of her full humanity in the temporal scene of contemporary society, they have assigned her a significant role in the greater...