Some old male masters involved in Leila’s story
Erica Jong does mention the names of the old male masters for the reader to realize once again how important is the reverse Pygmalion myth. Out of her adoration Leila painted this beautiful man (or photographed him) and made him famous as her muse. Thus she did what Rembrandt did for Saskia, what Wyeth did for Helga, what da Vinci did for Mona Lisa - p.65/II.
Rather ironically Jong evokes the name of the ‘big brown standard poodle Boner’. We are led to believe that this ordinary dog is the very embodiment of both Leila’s and Elmore’s aspirations. It is ‘named for both Michelangelo Buanarroti and Rosa Bonheur’(p.64 /II). The ordinary dog is likened to the male genius of Buanarroti and the female artist of the past - Bonheur, newly recovered name of the neglected. This reflects the beloved ironic approach of Jong to the impact of feminism on the understanding of art history. This is just a tiny example of the diverse, non-straightforward and cheerful approach of Jong who is often misinterpreted as a writer who takes too seriously her heroine. [Lodge 1989, Stanley 1990] With the bitter observation of a satirist Erica Jong applies another simile with a name of an old master at its core - that of Hogarth, in an idyllic scene of family reunion.
In the sitting room, I met with a Hogarthian tableau of the Donegal family chatting around the fire as if nothing at all were the matter p.46/II
This is a family that embodies the mythologized WASPdom for Leila. The WASP grounds are further subverted by the deliberate use of the technique of drawing in one’s mind, in Leila’s mind of an artist. This drawing even turns to be a ‘tableau’, which carries the snobbishness and the whimsical nature of the hypocritical family.
Copyright © : Iliyana Nedkova,1996-7
N.Paradoxa : Issue No.6, 1998