Subject: re: women in Salinger's work
From: Cecilia Baader (cbaader@cubsmvp.com)
Date: Fri Mar 30 2001 - 01:43:19 GMT
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001 Mattis Fishman <mattis@argoscomp.com> wrote:
> I would point out not that Salinger's stories lack prominent, real,
> females (as I believe there are plenty, as above), but that there is not
> a single instance of satisfying, mutual, love between a man and a woman
> in all of his collected stories. Now either you can say that
> Cosmopolitan Magazine already had enough of those, or that
> it reflects on a similar lack in the author, or ...
Perhaps it's just that satisfying, mutual love between a man and a woman just doesn't make for good fiction.
Kidding. (I think.)
Hmm. I've flipped through the stories in my mind, and I'd have to say that you are (mostly) right. I'd have to say, though, that however peripheral they are, Bessie and Les Glass appear to have a satisfying and mutual love. We don't know a whole lot about the senior Glasses, but what we do know seems to denote a real love.
Does that mean that only people's parents can have longstanding relationships, not the people themselves?
The only other mutual love that I can recall doesn't really fit Mattis's mold, as it is a love between two people who had broken up, but I'm thinking of Vincent Caulfield and Vincent's girl in the uncollected story "The Stranger". (A story that is one of my favorites. If you can get your hands on it, it's worth the effort.) Babe Gladwaller visits Vincent's girl, who is already married to someone else, to tell her how Vincent died. I don't know. I can't put my finger on it, exactly, but all I can say is that I think that these are the two most mutual lovers in all of Salinger's fiction. A dead guy and his girl.
Come to think of it, there's another dead guy and his girl in "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut". Is the message that love only endures if one of the partners is dead?
Interesting question. I'm inclined to agree with old J.D. on this his answer. Perhaps I'm just cynical, but I'm thinking it's just plain pragmatism. Mutual, satisfying love isn't something that you find on every streetcorner. In fact, I'd say that it was more the exception than the norm. So perhaps all he's doing is presenting an accurate portrait of the world.
Perhaps.
Regards,
Cecilia.
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