Ms

        Women in Literature was the final English class that I took at Canisius – and it was senior year. I could be wrong about this, but I had the feeling that the Women in Lit class was put together just before registration as some interest had been shown in having such a class. I think the syllabus was new; it was certainly in flux. How times have changed – now there are colleges that have entire majors, or university branches, devoted to Women’s Studies. What an exciting time to be in college! They say this is the century of the woman – to be in school now learning women’s issues and working toward the goal of a better world for women – ah to be young again and have a chance for such a path in life! Then again, maybe on one of those paths begun in the last century is right where I was supposed to be – who knows?

        Okay, after all that first paragraph loftiness, what did I get out of the class? We read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton – pain, depression, the imagery of man as the wild arm of the compass held to practicality by the steady, down-to-earth female arm of the compass.

George Eliot’s Middlemarch was listed in the curriculum to be read, but a classmate talked the teacher into doing Fear of Flying by Erica Jung instead. Excellent selection! Some might say Middlemarch will hold up better to the test of time, but Fear of Flying was a jolly good romp back in ’75!

        Have you ever heard of Harlequin Romances? Harlequin was a publishing company that put out 6 formulaic, mostly PG, romances per month in inexpensive paperback busting-out-of-the-bodice-on-the-cover form. There was a girl in the Women’s Lit class who read all of these books as soon as they came out in the supermarket. The teacher had never heard of them and was intrigued. Next thing we knew we were each asked to pick a different Harlequin to read – I think our classmate even brought in her vast collection for us to choose from. Afterward we discussed the formulaic aspect of the books – what did they all have in common? Essentially boy meets girl, girl not interested, boy woos girl, they get together but boy does something really dumb and they break up; eventually some disaster takes place and rescue of some sort happens such that boy and girl end up together at the end happily ever after.

        Mental note – make sure that my love story that will hopefully take place someday and the sooner the better is not as common as a Harlequin Romance.

        Also included in the class, we were required to do a term paper about women in literature. I wrote about the women in the Book of Genesis – you know, the Bible begins with Eve, the mother of all mankind and the cause of all the evil in the world by being the first sinner, and the Book of Genesis ends with a woman who is not even mentioned by name other than as Potiphar’s wife, a lying seductress. From exalted creator to oppressed second class citizen, women fall quickly in the first chapter of one version of the history of the world. Although I made these observations on my own, the premise is probably not too original. I enjoyed writing the paper, but a paper is all it was – nothing earth shaking like Sarah or Rebecca from Genesis, nor prophecy-fulfilling like Leah and Rachel and their respective handmaidens. I would be very reluctant to give my husband a handmaiden in order to fulfill prophecy – what if I was wrong? Yeah….

        One day while sitting at a long conference-type table in the class, the teacher asked what it was like to walk past a construction site and hear remarks called out to us by the men? I don’t remember if there were any guys in the class – if there were any, they were very few in number. And the assumption was that the construction site had only men workers, which in 1975, was almost 100% the case. What an interesting topic for discussion! In my own experience, guys would call out, whistle, laugh, joke as I walked by on the city streets. I did not take it personally – I knew they did that to all the females of a certain age. And the men would have liked any kind of acknowledgement in return that they had been heard – be it a smile or wave, a roll of the eyes, a flinch, turning away, picking up speed, even a curse would have met the men’s need for attention from the young woman. Mostly I ignored them – which was the best thing to do. Or so I thought. While the act of receiving catcalls was not comfortable, I did not feel threatened by them, nor did I feel I had upset them if I ignored them. Not all the girls had the same experience, however, some were harassed and accused of haughtiness if they ignored the catcalls resulting in a feeling that they might be in imminent danger. How is it we live in different worlds while walking past the same construction site?

        From fear of flying to donating handmaidens, from Harlequin romances to college majors in Women’s Studies, from hearing catcalls when walking past a group of men to growing past the age of catcalls – not so much because the woman walking by the male workers is too old to be leered at, but because the world has advanced just that tiny bit such that catcalls nowadays can get the guy in trouble, it is a great time to be a woman!

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