I know it seems counterproductive to think about the role of women in a book all about men, but Hella\u2019s been on my mind a lot this past week. I commented on Faith\u2019s last post about the ways in which Hella constitutes an \u201ceasy way out\u201d for David. Even though he does not love her, he values all that she represents as a woman: a socially acceptable heterosexual relationship, a couple of kids and white picket fence, and the promises of the American Dream\u2122. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I find especially remarkable about Hella is just how incredibly unremarkable <\/em>she is. Hella is hardly featured in the novel; aside from a brief appearance in the final chapters, she exists primarily as a vague, nebulous concept to which David periodically alludes but who never fully develops as a character. In fact, for all the many times she\u2019s mentioned by other characters, all we really know about her is that she really <\/em>submits to the patriarchy: her self-proclaimed purpose in life seems to be nothing more than to marry a man and to raise his children–to exist as someone\u2019s \u201cobedient and most loving servant,\u201d which she professes is \u201call [she\u2019s] good for\u201d (EN&S 323-324)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite an initial reactionary distaste, it now occurs to me that Baldwin never intended to develop Hella because she\u2019s not really a person at all: she\u2019s a doorstop!<\/em> Hella\u2019s function is analogous to Madeleine\u2019s in \u201cThe Male Prison.\u201d As Baldwin describes it, \u201cMadeleine kept open for [Gide] a kind of door of hope, of possibility, the possibility of entering into communion with another sex. This door, which is the door to life and air and freedom from the tyranny of one’s own personality, must be kept open, and none feel this more keenly than those on whom the door is perpetually threatening or has already seemed to close\u201d (CE 233).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In exactly the same way that Madeleine appeals to Gide, so, too, does Hella appeal to David: not as an autonomous human being with her own thoughts and feelings, but as a representation of the nuclear family and the traditional gender roles into which David so damnably wants to fit. Hella is nothing more than a solution to David\u2019s problems–a \u201csteady ground, like the earth itself, where [he] could always be renewed\u201d (EN&S 302).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I know it seems counterproductive to think about the role of women in a book all about men, but Hella\u2019s been on my mind a lot this past week. I commented on Faith\u2019s last post about the ways in which Hella constitutes an \u201ceasy way out\u201d for David. Even though he does not love her, … Continue reading The (Fe)Male Prison<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3922,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[489038],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-giovannis-room"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3922"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}