Ophelia Triumphant:
The Survival of Adolescent Girls in Recent Fiction by Butler and Womack
by Michael Levy
used by permission of the author
Ophelia died because she could not grow.
Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia (242)
When I was coming of age in the early 1970's Alvin Toffler's Future Shock was, for me at least, a book of almost talismanic importance. It helped me understand the craziness of Vietnam, sex, drugs, and rock n' roll, the entire out-of-control world. Later, Toffler's theories on change helped legitimize for me the validity of studying science fiction and seeing it as a literature uniquely suited to the times. Now, however, in middle age I have other concerns. When my stepson was in high school he was fond of telling me that school was different now, that I couldn't possibly understand his problems, but, like most parents, I suspect, I didn't really believe him. Rightly or wrongly, ignoring what I'd learned from Toffler about change, I assumed that his problems were basically the same as mine had been, with only the specifics altered. Well, Scott survived high school and is now a college Engish major. Whether or not he'll survive that, remains to be seen, but he's 21 and he's on his own. Now I can concentrate on my daughter, Miriam, age nine going, on 14, going on 18, and her survival.
I worried about Scott, but I'm more concerned about Miriam, in part because she's simply more impetuous than Scott was, in part because it's harder for me to assume that her problems as a girl are and will be identical to mine, in part, I suspect, because, regardless of any feminist beliefs I hold, I've been thoroughly socialized to see girls as more at risk, particularly in today's world. In her recent book Reviving Ophelia, Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, Mary Pipher argues that "girls are having more trouble now than they had thirty years ago...more trouble than even ten years ago. Something new is happening. Adolescence has always been hard, but it's harder now because of cultural changes in the last decade. The protected place in space and time that we once called childhood has grown shorter." (p. 28). I have to admit that I find this a frightening thought.
I originally picked up Pipher's book looking for help on raising my daughter, of course, but as I was reading it I found myself thinking about two novels I'd read a couple of years ago, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993) and Jack Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence(1993). Both books impressed mewhen I first read them, but after reading Reviving Ophelia, I found myself returning to them with a new sense of urgency. Both novels take place in decaying, near-future urban locales--Parable is set in metro Los Angeles, Random Acts in Manhattan. Both books involve girls who must not only cope with the craziness of adolescence, but also with radically decaying lifestyles, parents who can no longer deal with the outside world, and, eventually, the near collapse of western civilization. Now, I don't expect my daughter to end up in straits as dire as those portrayed by Butler and Womack, but it seems to me that both novels do have a lot to say about growing up female in rapidly-changing, late-twentieth and early- twenty-first century America. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to focus on the concept of change in Butler's Parable and Womack's Random Acts and, more specifically, on how the two novels' adolescent protagonists cope or fail to cope with their radically changing environments.
Lola Hart, the protagonist of Random Acts, is twelve when the novel opens and has lived a life of privilege. Her father is a screenwriter, her mother a professor. Lola and her younger sister, nicknamed Boob, attend a posh private school and live in a nice Manhattan apartment. Unfortunately, due to the deteriorating state of the economy, the film industry is at a standstill and Lola's father can no longer sell his work. Even worse, her mother has lost her job due to retrenchment at New York University. Used to living high, the family at first has trouble economizing. Approaching bankruptcy, they are forced to move to a cheaper apartment near Harlem. Mr. Hart eventually finds a job managing a bookstore. Mrs. Hart, although increasingly dependent on Prozac, brings in some money by editing manuscripts.
Fifteen year-old Lauren Olamina in Parable of the Sower at first seems to be much worse off than Lola Hart does. Although her father is also a university professor, their family lives at only slightly better than subsistence level in a walled community near L.A. Homeless people, turned vicious from poverty, and gangs, driven to pyromania and murder under the influence of drugs, make regular attempts to pillage the community. The hills outside of town are home to cannibals and killer dog packs. Lauren herself suffers from a serious disability. While pregnant, her mother took an experimental drug and Lauren was born with an "organic delusional syndrome" called "hyperempathy" which causes her to feel, or rather think she feels, other people's pain (Butler interview, 335).
In The Drama of the Gifted Child (1981) Alice Miller was one of the first psychologists to examine girls' rites of passage free from the blinders imposed by Freudian psychology. Miller argued that pre-adolescent and adolescent girls frequently discover that they have a choice between being, on the one hand, honest and true to themselves, and, on the other hand, being loved (36-37). Needing to be loved, as do we all, they are forced, through a process Miller calls "splitting," to disown much of themselves, including, more often than not, their anger and their sexuality. Whereas Miller sees parents as primarily to blame for this phenomena, Pipher argues in Reviving Ophelia that the blame belongs less to parents, who often have very little influence on their adolescent daughters, and more to society as a whole, particularly peer pressure and the mass media. These two forces are very obviously at work on Lola and her younger sister in Random Acts. Both Lola and Boob tend to accept the beliefs of their snooty private school peer group. Thus, their eventual rejection by those friends after they've moved to a poorer neighborhood and after Lola is accused of being "queer," is devastating. This is especially so for Boob, who, less flexible than Lola, is more dependent upon both other people and material goods for her sense of self-esteem. Boob has also been infected by the reactionary social beliefs of her mother's sister Chrissie, who lives in an upscale walled community in California. Whereas Lola gradually adapts to her situation after the Harts move, begins to explore the new world around her, and makes new friends, Boob spends virtually all of her free time lying in bed, being depressed, and clutching her "My L'l Fetus" doll, a present from Chrissie. When, near the end of the novel, after her mother sends her to live with Aunt Chrissie "in the bunker," it comes as no surprise that Boob refuses even to speak with her mother or sister on the phone.
The media are less of an influence on Lauren than they are on the Hart girls, largely because she has never lived a life of privilege. Both Lauren and Lola, however, must deal with the expectations that society places upon young women. Lauren's father is a Baptist minister as well as a professor and he expects his daughter to accept the standard Christian values and live what passes in their community for a traditional lifestyle. A good man by his own lights, Mr. Olamina doesn't usually rule his home with a heavy hand, but he and the rest of the community do expect their children to obey the rules absolutely. When Lauren's younger brother, Keith, disobeys his father, sneaks out of the walled community, and loses the key to the gate, he is beaten severely upon his return. Mr. Olamina must thus be held partly responsible when Keith leaves permanently, takes up a life of crime, and dies a hideous and early death. With Keith's example before her, Lauren doesn't even consider telling her father that she is no longer a Christian. Nor does she mention the new and evolving religious faith called Earthseed that has come to dominate her thoughts.
Adolescence is a time of great conflict and change as teenagers begin to redefine their relationships with their parents and their culture. They experiment with sex. They take up political causes and explore their spirituality. Everything seems up for grabs. Conversely, however, they can be enormously conservative. They will frequently proclaim their own need to be different, but attack unmercifully those peers who are different in ways that they themselves don't approve of. Sexuality in particular can be both a means of rebellion and something to be controlled by peer pressure. In Parable, Lauren is considered a good girl by her community and her friends because she generally appears to follow the rules. She's chosen a boyfriend her own age, someone considered appropriate by the community and, although she's no longer a virgin, their sexual activity is circumspect. Further, it's assumed that she will marry him; never mind the fact that he isn't her intellectual equal. Only later, when she is no longer bound by the rules of her community, can Lauren make what is for her a more appropriate choice of sexual partner, a late-middle aged doctor. In Random Acts, Lola's problems with sex are even worse than Lauren's. Girls at her school, even twelve year olds, walk a narrow line. They must be sexually forward, but not too forward for fear of being called " sluts." Their boyfriends must attend the right schools. Any behavior seen as deviant by the group, must be avoided or kept hidden for fear of ridicule. One of their crowd is a bulimic, and everyone talks about it behind her back, but as long as she's circumspect, no one will do anything about it. When Katherine, one of Lola's closest friends comes on to her during a sleepover, Lola is confused, in part because she likes it. Later, when Katherine's father catches them kissing, he self-righteously exposes Lola as a pervert, despite the fact that he has been sexually abusing his daughter for years. Lola finds herself ostracized by her friends and scapegoated as a "queer." Even her younger sister, Boob, professes terror that Lola will rape her.
Both Lauren and Lola find their worlds collapsing around them. In Parable, Lauren's walled community is under increasing pressure from people who come over the wall to steal, rape, and murder. One day her father disappears, presumably killed on his way home from work. Eventually the walled community itself suffers a full-scale assault and is burned to the ground. Although her brothers and stepmother, virtually everyone she knows and loves, are killed, Lauren survives the assault, though she finds herself homeless and alone. In Random Acts, Lola's father is literally worked to death by his boss. Her sister Boob, retreats into depression, and then falls even further into the paranoia implicit in her acceptance of Aunt Chrissie's bunker lifestyle. Her mother, unable to deal with the situation, abuses tranquilizers and ends up hospitalized. It's clear that Mrs. Hart isn't going to make it and Lola realizes that she's going to have to take over. Both Lauren's world and Lola's are going to hell and yet, at least in the short term, they continue to survive. Why?
Reviving Ophelia provides clues as to why some girls survive when so many others do not. One of the keys is androgyny. Pipher writes that it helps girls to succeed in life to be "androgynous, having the ability to act adaptively in any situation regardless of gender role constraints. An androgynous person can comfort a baby or change a tire, cook a meal or chair a meeting.... [T]hey are free to act without worrying if their behavior is feminine or masculine; androgynous adults are the most well adjusted" ( p. 18). Further, she argues, successful girls are "authentic...`owning' ...all experience, including emotions and thoughts that are not socially acceptable" (p. 38). These often repressed, socially unacceptable feelings are what Jung called "the shadow." Ursula K. Le Guin writes "The shadow is on the other side of our psyche, the dark brother of the conscious mind. It is Cain, Caliban, Frankenstein's monster, Mr. Hyde." Repressed, unacknowledged, it can destroy its possessor, as it almost destroyed Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea. For Pipher, however, merely recognizing the shadow's presence is not enough. To survive, girls must "understand the effects of the culture on their lives" and fight back. They must "learn that they have conscious choices to make and ultimate responsibility for those choices" (44).
1) Androgyny. Lauren, an oldest child, is used to being in charge and getting things done. She feels no need to hide her intelligence. She's fortunate to have grown up with a father who, while patriarchal, is not overwhelmingly sexist. Mr. Olimina has instilled in her a sense of respect for her own accomplishments. Further, he has insisted that everyone in the community who is old enough must learn to shoot and defend themselves. Several of the more traditionally feminine women and girls have refused to do this and Lauren could easily have used her hyperempathy as an excuse to do likewise. Instead, she recognizes the need for self-defense in her world and learns how to minimize the effect of her disability in an emergency. For example, rather than avoiding guns, she learns to shoot prone, so she won't be hurt if she collapses in pain after hitting her target. In Random Acts, Lola, although at first suffering more than does Lauren from the effects of traditional, gender-oriented peer pressure, also displays confidence in herself and a willingness to go beyond what might be considered the strictly feminine. When she first moves into her new neighborhood, she dresses in a feminine fashion and, when accosted by a gang, can think of nothing to do but scream. Later, under the influence of three street-wise new friends, she learns how to dress for her environment and how to defend herself. While not necessarily morally defensible, her eventual ability to commit assault and robbery shows that she can take on a traditionally masculine role when necessary. Lola's developing awareness of herself as a lesbian can, perhaps, be seen as yet another proof of her increasing androgyny.
2) Owning experiences, thoughts, and emotions. Lauren and Lola share a willingess to make decisions and accept consequences. They don't lie to themselves or attempt to avoid responsibility. When Lauren learns how to shoot, she recognizes that, if she ever has to fire a gun in anger, it will be a matter of life or death. Thus, when someone wounds a dangerous dog, she chooses to put the animal out of its misery herself. The other children consider her coldblooded, but she realizes that she must know that she can do it despite her hyperempathy. Recognizing that, irregardless of her father's best efforts, their walled community is doomed, she refuses to hide from her conclusions. Lola is similarly clear minded. Just as Lauren must accept her hyperempathy and figure out how to keep others from taking advantage of her, Lola must learn to accept being a lesbian, despite the pain it will cause her. In this regard she contrasts with her friend Katherine who not only denies having initiated their sexual relationship, but also denies her father's sexual abuse.
3) Understanding the effects of the culture, and fighting back--making conscious choices. Able to see further into the future than those who refuse to acknowledge their own experiences and the world around them, Lauren and Lola can both consciously prepare themselves for survival. Lauren sets out to develop the skills she will need after the collapse occurs. She prepares backpacks stuffed with tools, money, seed and anything else she's likely to need, and she reads widely on survival-related topics. Lola's decisions may not be as conscious as Lauren's, but they're just as far reaching. Lola, in fact, is something of a chameleon. An upper-class Jewish girl in Harlem, she doesn't fit at first, but she quickly adapts, picking up not just the look of the streets, but the attitudes, and even the language. Both Butler and Womack use the device of a girl's diary to convey their stories. When Lola first starts her diary her language is Standard English with only a modicum of adolescent slang. As she becomes more and more immersed in her new world, however, her language mutates, turns into the lingo of the streets, until it reaches a point where the reader finds it barely coherent. This change in dialect makes a point though. Not only is Lola becoming one with her new world, but her language is taking on the attributes of that world as well. As nouns mutate into verbs and tenses disappear, Lola adapts to a realm of immediacy and action.
Ultimately, though, it's all about change. Lola and Lauren survive when many of their family and friends do not, primarily because they're capable of seeing that change is necessary and, when it comes, riding the wave. There is, however, a considerable difference in how they change and where that change leads them. I said early on in this paper that in Random Acts Lola starts out in better shape than Lauren does in Parable of the Sower. Her initial straits are less desperate. Yet, Womack's ending is much darker than Butler's.
Random Acts opens with Lola's first entry in her new diary (which she nicknames Anne): "Mama says mine is a night mind. The first time she said that, I asked her what she meant and she said `Darling you think best in the dark like me'" (p. 7). The language is standard English. At the novel's end, however, having committed robbery and murder, prepared to join the DCons, the worst of the city's street gangs, Lola writes
Spec your mirror and there I be. Crazy evilness be my design if that's what needs wearing....Chase me if you want. Funnyface me if you keen but mark this when I go chasing I go catching. Eye cautious when you step out people cause I be running streetwild come nightside and nobody safes when I ride. I bite. Can't cut me now. Can't fuck me now. Can't hurt me now. No more. No more.
Night night Anne. Night night. I'm with the DCons now. (p. 254)
Mrs. Hart's initial comment that Lola has "a night mind" is meant innocently enough, but as the novel progresses it becomes clear that Lola, by changing to fit her environment, is moving towards a different kind of "night mind," a first-hand awareness of the world's evil. With her father gone, her mother incapacitated, the family ineligible for welfare, and the only other relative willing to take her a veritable monster, Lola's only choice is the street and a life of crime. An innocent young girl as the novel opens, she has learned to do what she has to to survive, indeed she's shown an unusual talent for violence. Part way through the book, after she has been attacked by an older, much more experienced girl, but beaten the girl badly in return, Lola is embarrassed, insisting "I'm not like that...Going post office," but her friend and lover Iz replies "Must be part a you like that otherwise it wouldn't show...People do awful things even nice people" (pp. 159-60). When Lola continues to feel guilty about what she's done, Iz exclaims "Gangstagirls better eye you close...Cause you blood deadly girl, way you move" (160). Later, Lola accompanies Iz and another girlfriend into the symbolically named Pit, the worst part of the city, actually picks a fight with "gangstas," and wins.
Throughout the novel, the repeated phrase "Night night Anne" has simply been a somewhat childish way of closing a diary entry. At the end of the book, however, it's become something more. Lola has given herself to the night and the DCons. This gang is described in the book as "bad evilness, the worst of worst.... They prime nightcrawlers, they soulslashers, they roll when it darken and nobody see their shadow" (p. 186). The DCons are shrouded in a supernatural aura. The police and all of the other gangs are afraid of them. They can "suck your brains out of your ears" (160) and they steal babies; "even if they caught they still be round" (187). By the novel's end, Lola, who nows sees herself as worthy of being a DCon, also seems to have taken on a supernatural air. In the passage beginning "Spec your mirror and there I be" that closes Random Acts one can't help but notice an odd echo of Tom Joad's speech in The Grapes of Wrath when, hiding from the law, contemplating his own death, he say's "I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be every'where--wherever you look" (572). Tom, forced by society to become an outlaw, sees himself as a kind of spirit of the common man. Lola, changed almost beyond recognition in her struggle to survive, has become a creature of darkness.
In Random Acts, Lola takes control of her life and changes radically to embrace the culture in which she now lives; unfortunately, it's a culture of death and violence, one that seems likely to destroy her in the long run. In Parable of the Sower, however, Lauren is older than Lola and more capable of seeing beyond the moment. She recognizes the importance of change in her life and in the world around her. Seeing it as a universal governing principle, Lauren writes "All that you touch/You Change./All that you Change/Changes you./The only lasting truth/Is Change./ Change is God" (3). From this basic concept, Lauren develops the religious faith that she calls Earthseed which she explains through a series of aphorisms. Its tenets are few. Change is a constant, something we cannot avoid, so we must "adapt and endure." Change is "Indifferent" to individuals (24), but we can influence it to some extent, if we're prepared for it; "With forethought and work,/ We shape God" (17). Those who are destroyed by change, are themselves largely to blame because "A victim of God may,/Through forethought and planning,/ Become a shaper of God./ Or a victim of God may,/ Through shortsightendness and fear,/ Remain God's victim" (31). Beliefs, Lauren concludes, are valuable only if they lead to action (45). Lauren's belief in change and the importance of controlling her own life eventually brings her, perhaps not with total logic, to believe in a kind of interstellar Manifest Destiny. She writes, "Only we are Earthseed. And the Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars" (71).
Like Lola in Random Acts, Lauren survives the collapse of her
world and begins to gather around her a group of friends, but there is a
major difference between the girls. Despite her acceptance of the violent
ethics of the street, her adoption of street language, and the love she
shares with Iz, Lola is still a white girl, an outsider, someone with whom
her new friends, even Iz, cannot and will not share everything. Although
she has changed to fit her world, she has not been able to gain much control
over it. Rather than simply accepting Jung's shadow as part of herself,
she has become that shadow, jettisoning most of what was good in her life.
Lola's final descent into darkness, her unilateral decision that she is
"with the DCons now" can be seen as a final, desperate attempt
to achieve acceptance within her new environment.