by Douglas
Messerli
Jane Bowles Two Serious Ladies in My Sister's Hand in Mine: An Expanded
Edition of the Collected Works of Jane Bowles (New York: The Ecco Press,
1978)
The two serious ladies of Jane Bowles' title, are, in many
ways, as different as they could be; and, although they know one another
slightly, they are not good friends. Bowles presents us with a brief history of
Christina Goering, daughter of a wealthy American industrialist. Even as a
child Christina was not appealing, most children refusing to play with her
because of in the puritanical religious games she demanded along with a bizarre
series of punishments, in one case involving being packed in mud before
swimming in a small stream.
But hardly has
this tale begun, with its completely unexpected results, before Bowles
interrupts it to tell another story, about Mrs. Copperfield. The two meet
momentarily at the party, but other than that, there seems to be little
connection, and one can only wonder at the structural logic of Bowles' fiction.
For all that, we
do, however, sense a link between the two other than the authorial declaration
of them both being "serious" ladies. Mrs. Copperfield is far more
hesitant in doing new things than is Miss Goering, yet it is she who actually
travels, with her husband, to Panama. And once she is ensconced into the
run-down hotel in the middle of town to which he has taken her—determined to
forgo the expense of the more popular tourist hotel—she appears far more
adventuresome than anyone else in the fiction.
Certainly her
first foray into Colón street life is characterized as a Kafka-like nightmare:
"They
were walking through the streets arm in arm. Mrs. Copperfield's forehead was
burning hot and her hands were cold. She felt something trembling in the pit of
her stomach. When she looked ahead of her the very end of the street seemed to
bend and then straighten out again.. Above their heads the children were
jumping up and down on the wooden porches and making the houses shake. Someone
bumped against Mrs. Copperfield's shoulder and she was almost knocked over. At
the same time she was aware of the strong and fragrant odor of rose perfume.
The person who had collided with her was a Negress in a pink silk evening
dress.
...’Listen,’ said the Negress, ‘go down the
next street and you'll like it better. I've got to meet my beau over at that
bar.’ She pointed it out to them.
‘That's a beautiful barroom. Everyone goes
in there,’ she said. She moved up closer and addressed herself solely to Mrs.
Copperfield. ‘You come along with me, darling, and you'' have the happiest time
you've ever had before. I'll be your type. Come on.’
....The Negress caressed Mrs. Copperfield's
face with the palm of her hand. ‘Is that what you want to do darling, or do you
want to come along with me?’
....’Wasn't that the strangest thing
you've ever seen?’ said Mrs. Copperfield breathlessly.”
It is precisely scenes like this, or even more
normal-seeming meetings wherein the characters say totally unpredictable things
that entice us into Bowles' story and helps us to comprehend Mrs. Copperfield's
actions. For no sooner has she encountered this strange world than she is truly
sucked up into it, joining, ultimately, the prostitute Pacifica, who encourages
her to move into the Hotel de las Palmas where she lives.
Giving up her
husband's hotel, and, finally, even her husband himself, the timid and
frightened Mrs. Copperfield discovers the friendship and love of the local
prostitutes and shares time with them drinking in bars. By the end of her
story, we recognize that she, like Miss Goering, is a woman on a mission to
challenge herself, to alter her life, and survive in conditions she might never
have imagined. Similar to Miss Goering, this serious woman is rushing into the
unknown as a kind of punishment and test for her own fears. As Mr. Copperfield
writes, in his goodbye letter to his wife:
Like most people, you are not able to face more than one fear during
your
lifetime. You also spend your life fleeing from your first fear towards
your first hope. Be careful that you do not, through your own wiliness,
end
up in the same position in which you began.
In short, as we are about to discover, Mrs.
Copperfield—although a much more charming and, at times, disarmingly sensual
woman, is of the same breed as Miss Goering, both of them being strong
strictly-raised women of great eccentricity testing themselves over and over
again to challenge the patterns of their lives.
When we return
to the story of Miss Goering, accordingly, we read her increasingly bizarre
shifts in reality with the knowledge that, as in the case of Mrs. Copperfield,
it can result in significant sensual changes.
Yet, as we have
been told, Miss Goering's seriousness is more of the religious type than Mrs.
Copperfield's inconsistencies. She is determined to challenge almost all her
fears. She sells her lovely house, despite the outcry of the parasitic Miss
Gamelon and challenges of the t dependent Arnold, moving to an industrial
island near Staten Island into a house with little charm and hardly any heat.
When a third
man, Arnold's father, determines to join their strange little community,
Christina begins traveling to the larger island, visiting a local derelict bar
and accepting the offers of its male customers to join them in bed.
After her first
adventure, she reports that she intends to return, admitting that she may not
come immediately come back. One by one, the remaining trio who have lived with
and off of her fortune, abandon the house, Arnold having discovered a new love,
Miss Gamelon having moved into another house, and Arnold's father returning to
his wife. In the end Miss Goering, who has gone off with a ugly man who
believes she is a prostitute, must face a future even more undetermined than
Mrs. Copperfield, who has returned to New York with Pacifica in tow—although it
does appear that Pacifica may not soon bolt.
Even Miss
Goering, although believing that the challenges she has set before her, has
made her "nearer to becoming a saint," wonders if she hasn't been
piling "sin upon sin as fast as Mrs. Copperfield." For these strong
women have both become dependent upon the flesh.
The marvel of
Bowels' strange tale is its complete originality. Although, the events she
tells are often strange, even a bit surreal, they are played out in a seemingly
logical way that they seem the more incredible for their occurring. Most
important, the central figures speak in the linguistic pattern, mixing a kind
of nineteenth century rhetoric with a language which might be at home on the
street. In a very odd way, Bowles' language is as outlandish as is Damon
Runyon's—except that although these characters, like Runyon's, are not
particularly educated, their talking is a process of thought instead of simple
communication. And in that sense, they are always participating in a
dialogue—socially or interiorized—with everyone around them, with the entire
world.
At times, in
fact, it seems that the whole world might potentially be pulled into Bowles'
tale as the two serious ladies travel about, gathering up friends and lovers as
they go. Both are heavy drinkers, who prefer to sit at the bar and seem able to
attract anyone to them with whom they speak. Critics have mentioned the pattern
of twos and threes that accumulate around Mrs. Copperfield and Miss Goering,
but I would argue that while the two do tend to alternate between duos and
trios, like magnets they might equally attract dozens of willing partners, men
and women. And, in that sense, these highly wrought women are a bit like
latter-day prophets, missionaries who in preaching to the natives, willingly
take on the attributes and behavior of those whom they might seek to save,
transforming themselves, in the end, into absolutely ordinary human beings. Yet
both, strangely, have become something larger simply through their abilities to
change their lives.
Los Angeles,
November 29, 2011
Reprinted from EXPLORINGfictions
(December 2011).
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