|
Alumna
and Author Erica Jong Guest Lectures at Barnard
|
Erica Jong (right) with Barnard students
|
Fear
of Flying, the 1973 bestselling novel about a young woman's
sexual adventures by Barnard alumna Erica Jong, has taken
its place among classic texts like Madame Bovary, Wuthering
Heights and Lolita in a course taught at Barnard
on passion and desire in literature.
And Jong herself accepted an invitation to discuss her famous
book and its place in this literary tradition on April 29,
appearing for the first time as a guest lecturer in Professor
Rachel Mesch's comparative literature course, Sexualities
and Storytelling, during the final week of spring classes.
The course explores how writers, including Emily Bronte, Gustave
Flaubert and E.M. Forster, work through sexuality and desire
in constructing a narrative and how gender and sexuality affect
storytelling and plot dynamics.
Jong, a 1963 Barnard
graduate, recalled the public uproar over her book and described
her motivation and ideas in writing it: "I wanted to
write what goes on in a woman's mind and fantasies, to lay
bare the interior mind of women," said Jong. "I
didn't believe anyone would publish [the book] and I didn't
care. I just needed to get it out."
The groundbreaking novel, which has been translated into 27
languages and sold 12.5 million copies worldwide, is the story
of Isadora Wing, who risks her marriage and her life in pursuit
of sexual liberation.
"When it was published it caused a firestorm," Jong
said. "Networks wouldn't run commercials on it and magazines
wouldn't print excerpts," Jong told the class of 13 undergraduates,
who were born a decade after Fear of Flying raised
eyebrows among many Americans for its frank sexual content.
In Mesch's seminar, students discover the complex interplay
in literature and film between sexual drive and storytelling
through a close reading of novels by Emily Bronte, Gustave
Flaubert, E.M. Forster, Vladimir Nabokov and Rachilde, and
the viewing of films that include The English Patient
and The Crying Game.
Mesch
said: "We considered the way that the reading and writing
processes are intimately bound up with sexual drives and the
ways that the deferral and satisfaction of desire fuel the
dynamic of storytelling."
Jong's first novel carved out a new path for female protagonists
in literature, Mesch said.
"I think what is so powerful about Jong's novel is that
she consciously chose to subvert a specific literary paradigm,"
she said. "In the 19th century novel, when a woman transgressed
sexual norms, she either died, as in Bronte's Wuthering
Heights, or committed suicide, as in Flaubert's Madame
Bovary. Jong worked against that impulse in creating Isadora,
and opened up a whole new path for female protagonists."
The course, which was introduced last year in Barnard's First
Year Seminar program, is now open as a comparative literature
course to all students.
Mesch said her students were thrilled by Jong's appearance.
"Many had their books signed by her after class. Despite
the generational difference, many of them identified strongly
with Jong's character Isadora. And Jong urged them to write
their own stories, to create new paradigms for female heroines.
I think it was both refreshing and inspiring for them to connect
with an author personally in that way."
Mesch, a lecturer in the French Department, teaches a variety
of language and literature courses in both English and French.
She is currently working on a book based on her doctoral dissertation,
titled The Hysteric's Revenge: Women Writers and the Female
Body in France, 1880-1910. As a literary scholar, her
research and writings focus on the way women writers responded
to the often misogynist medical and literary fascination with
female sexuality at the turn of the century.
Jong is the benefactor for the Erica Mann Jong '63 Writing
Center at Barnard, in which selected students who are chosen
as Writing Fellows provide assistance and feedback to student
writers on some aspect of their writing, such as chapters
of senior theses, drafts of papers, lab reports and other
writing projects.
Barnard's traditional strength in writing is reflected in
its alumnae, eight of whom have won or shared the Pulitzer
Prize. Besides Jong, prominent writers who are Barnard alumnae
include: Natalie Angier, Anne Bernays, Hortense Calisher,
Edwidge Danticat, Thulani Davis, Delia Ephron, Stacey D'Erasmo,
Francine du Plessix Gray, Zora Neale Hurston, Tama Janowitz,
June Jordan, Jhumpa Lahiri, Eileen McNamara, Daphne Merkin,
Judith Miller, Eliza Minot, Sigrid Nunez, Belva Plain, Anna
Quindlen, and Ntozake Shange. The Barnard faculty includes
novelist Mary Gordon, an alumna, novelist and screenwriter
Caryl Phillips, playwright Ellen McLaughlin and poet Saskia
Hamilton.
Contact:
Suzanne Trimel, (212) 854-7583, strimel@barnard.edu
|
