Reading Response Posting #2

Reta must deal with the absence of her daughter from her life but it doesn't mean she has to accept it. She wants to know why Nora has chosen this path, what causes her to wish for this GOODNESS which she obviously feels is beyond her. Reta places the blame on the roles of women in society still being less than that of man's. Throughout the novel there are male characters who continuously step upon Reta. A bullying journalist who makes her feel ancient and wants more of the juice from her personal life than the accounts of her writing. A publisher who pressures and talks at her until she agrees to change her book to suit his plans for it. Both pressure her and each time she allows them to do so, only allowing the reader to see her sharp and funny inner thoughts.

What is hard to understand about Reta's tolerance of this behaviour is that she does not at all seem like a meek female. She is a successful writer with great insight and well received novels under her belt. She has lived unmarried with the father of her three children (the two met at a protest march) for twenty-six. She translates the works of a strong feminist who is a woman whom she greatly admires. And yet, she allows herself to be trodden upon.

Reta can be a very intrapersonal person and so it makes sense that when she does cut loose, she does it discreetly. Throughout the novel Reta writes many pointed letters to writers who have published academic work extolling the virtues of the great minds of the centuries. Listed are Locke, Bacon, Galileo, and Newton. Also there are writers mentioned, such famous and influential authors and poets like Updike, Barnes, and Lowell. Reta demands to know where all the women have gone. She calls out for some by name, knowing that they are there, just pushed into the background. And this, Reta feels, is the problem. If women are not acknowledged than it is the same as writing off their accomplishments. She does not get angry at the offending writers; no, 'anger is not humanizing' (Unless 220) and all she wants is for her daughters to have the same chance to touch that greatness as men do. She realizes that the writers have 'merely overlooked those who are routinely overlooked' (Unless 220) and in her quiet but at last pointed way she makes her plea.

Of course, the letters are never sent.

In this is the theme. Men are not the only ones repressing women against achieving great things, they oppress themselves by not aiming there. Case in point: Reta only publishes light fictional literature, fun to read and 'naturally the novel would have a happy ending' (Unless 14). Even Reta, someone who is faced with what she sees as a her daughter's acknowledgement of inadequacy, cannot push herself to want that greatness too.