FORGET
BRIDGET JONES, the motion picture, if you can, and consider Fielding�s
sequential Bridget novel subtitled The Edge of Reason. Still
exploiting her hip �chicklit,� Fielding has carried on with the successful
formula. She seems to have all her support groups in place, but whether she can
develop or transform her style remains to be seen.
With
a more mature imagination than, say, Rowlings (although Harry Potter is
presumably relating to less mature readers), Fielding�s global readership has
its microcosm in London as the center of the (post-) millennial urban culture of
the single householder, generally alien to, ignorant of, or merely experimenting
with, any tradition more ancient than that of women gaining power over their own
bodies, now so long ago in the distant 1960s. The decade of the 80s was the
parent generation of Bridget�s London of today, the members of whom are the
(cultural) grandchildren of those who experienced the revolutionary changes of
the 60s. London today is already one generation on from the 50 percent divorce
rates, single parent families, zero population growth and homeless refugees of
the 80s.
So
what has changed since the 80s besides the obvious increase in the insecurity
inherent in a rootless individualistic society with no historical memory,
product of upwardly mobile consumerism wound to the breaking point as a result
of instantaneous virtual communications combined with failed human
relationships? Bridget is bright enough to see the precariousness of the planet,
but the individual struggle for survival, security and emotional equilibrium is
so difficult that the only energy she has left over for something greater than
herself is to find and give a little love, to build some compensating karma, to
keep from losing all hope in a hopeless world.
No
vision of utopia here, but definitive realism. Fielding strives for the
minimalist style of Raymond Carver (Where I�m Calling From), whose few
and simple words go deep, but her sense of humour and of the absurd, in the
(present) tragic human condition, are lighter, and as feminine as Carver�s are
(non-sexist) male.
The
Edge of Reason
focuses on the (female) psyche in the cultural and economic reality of London
after Diana�s death, Blair�s victory and perhaps the final extinction of
hope for progress towards a publicly-owned planet capable of checking the
excesses of exploiting every possible resource and human activity for its profit
potential. Bridget�s London is for New Labour, but basically because that
brand has been more successfully marketed in an apolitical culture.
Fielding�s
narrator continues to jot down her abbreviated stream of conscious (and
semi-conscious) thoughts and events in the diary-of-a-young-girl form, candidly
revealing her obsessions with herself, her image, fears and weaknesses and the
search for love, happiness and success. The Edge of Reason tries to offer
reassuringly gentle irony to those who grew up in the final decade of the
millennium, whose only recourse beyond fragile relationships is to turn to what
the �self-help� media market has to offer, their own inner resources, and a
little unreliable help from their friends.
Bridget
is an often vulnerable observer and victim of circumstances. Her understanding
of a broader reality is peripheral and not articulated. Like so many of us, she
needs to deny or simplify life�s problems which are too big for us as
individuals to know how to act upon beyond the one-on-one, step-by-step,
piecemeal solutions.
Barbara
Kingsolver had already demonstrated by the end of the 80s (The Bean Trees)
that a multitude of common folks already understood clearly that there are too
many corrupt and/or misguided people with too much power.
Compare
Bridget to Taylor Greer, narrator of Kingsolver�s early novel. Taylor has
grown up with an independent mother in a provincial rural backwater in the south
of the United States. She starts off on an extraordinary life journey that takes
her west to Tucson, Arizona, and provides the basis for discovering the
strengths and conflicts of some very different cultures right in the heart of
America. Taylor gets an abused Indian baby, absorbs multi-cultural Tucson,
connects with the underground sanctuary movement for clandestine immigrants
fleeing from US-backed murder in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Taylor
is searching for her collective soul rather than examining her own psyche. She
learns more about herself through learning about others than by working on her
personal, cosmetic preoccupations. Both Bridget and Taylor want self-realisation
and relationship, both face more or less tragic obstacles, and both are
characteristically strong (female) survivors with good senses of humour, if of
somewhat different eras and situations. But their parameters are very different.
Bridget struggles to be both hip and humane in a hip but often inhumane
megalopolis. Taylor is exploring the immigrant option that is so much a part of
her past. Where is there to emigrate to from the center of civilisation?
Taylor
is of the pre-internet generation, near the end of the New Age utopia. She has
lived through the women�s revolution which Bridget has inherited. By the time
Bridget comes on the scene, family and human reproductive patterns have already
undergone the radical changes that Taylor has experienced.
Safe sex is more important than the pill, God has been dead for a long
time, the last Communist has been privatised, global warming has taken place.
Taylor is already a single mother for whom a family is not based upon blood or
traditional sexual relationships, but has to be created as a viable and superior
alternative to the dysfunctional nuclear family. Bridget�s sense of social
responsibility stops with faithfulness to her friends and as much kindness and
generosity to those around her as she can muster. Taylor develops a social
conscience.
Taylor
Greer knows she needs a nexus with nature. Kingsolver goes back and down into
the origins of (the) character, through tradition and into the Earth. Can
individual life today touch the planet deeply enough to keep our soul from dying
and our psyches from disintegrating? Fielding asks afresh this question at a
more self-destructive moment than when Kingsolver first expressed some modestly
hopeful answers. And Kingsolver is a storyteller, since undeniably verified in Animal
Dreams, Pigs With Wings, and The Poisonwood Bible, each of
which take us deep into the American reality which has shaped the world we are
living in today.
Tucson
in the 80s was already a global urban scene, but Fielding�s London loses all
contact with the pre-global past. Bridget represents a layer of life in the
present moment. Kingsolver�s American southwest shows layer upon layer of
richly diverse character and culture. Bridget is a snapshot of Fielding�s
London now. The historical past and future vision run deep and rich alongside
the story of Taylor Greer. Tucson still isn�t a mere suburb of London (or Wall
Street or Silicon Valley), and even less similar are the stories across land and
cultures leading in that direction.
Neither
is New Delhi yet a mere information-age off-shoot of the center of the sole
planetary super-power. Kingsolver -- like such other contemporary N. American
(women) writers as Carol Shields, E. Annie Proulx, Margaret Atwood, and Alice
Munro � is still writing about a rural tradition under metamorphosis. Thus,
comparing Fielding�s London to another urban writer�s New York and New
Delhi perhaps provides more perspective.
East
Into Upper East
takes New York as the metropolitan center. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala demonstrates in
these stories a different connection to the land and tradition than Kingsolver.
And London is the bridge spanning the colonial era between India and America.
The characters in these stories are better developed than Fielding�s or
Kingsolver�s � and they often use fewer and more powerful words, shaped more
by both their current circumstances and by their deeper, richer traditions and
history. We are presented with a reality that goes beyond the stereotyped and
statistical �singletons� and their surrounding, relatively tolerant, open
society. And, more like Fielding, Prawer Jhabvala refrains from having her
characters spell out any political and ethical conclusions.
In
East Into Upper East we see the movement of culture from British colony
to uptown Manhattan today. Two New York women organize the transfer of an Indian
woman healer to New York, only to discover that cultural integration can take
many different forms. In a subsequent story we hear of two women who have come
to desire each other less and equally, and their relationship with the
beautiful, idolized � but selfish and narcissistic � son of the more
attractive and sensual of the two lovers. These stories ask us to dig deeper in
order to discover ethical and political meaning through the beauty of the
language, through the revelations of the personalities.
Reading
great fiction is second only to travel, or doing research into the human animal
and her environment, as a means towards understanding the world. Even better
than travel or research is the help fiction gives us in going beyond
understanding, to a sensing of the good and beautiful. Give me Carter over
Fielding for post-minimalist searching for the soul of modern man (sic).
Give
me Prawer Jhabvala � or any number of powerful N. American (women) writers
like Kingsolver and Alice Munro (Open Secrets, 1994) � over Fielding
for the lives, the psychoanthropological stories of the present and past, with
realistic glances at what the future holds for tomorrow�s global urban
population of �singletons� � whether in London, New Delhi, or Tucson.
Richard Stern, originally from Seattle, holds degrees in Political Science and Education from Howard University and Western Washington State University and has been a language lecturer at the University of Bergamo in Italy since 1991. He finds that major contemporary women artists have a lot to teach.
Note: This review was first published on July 16 2002 by JUST Book Reviews.
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