Southern Belles Lettres
One of the most revered books in the Southern canon, Fair and Tender Ladies is getting some unwelcome attention lately in our local reading area. On behalf of an unidentified local citizen, a Washington County Public School Board member has requested that Fair and Tender Ladies be removed from the Advanced Placement reading list for college-bound Juniors. This is ironic and sad. I can think of no other book that is better suited to an audience that is preparing to discover the larger world outside of the confines of rural Southwest Virginia for a couple of reasons. It brings them into contact with conflicts that are present in the lives of all young adults in the passage into adulthood: loss of innocence and the weight of responsibility that comes with the imagined freedom from the restraints imposed by being a dependent, along with having to make difficult decisions and the onus of having to live with the results, even when things don't work out. It also brings them into close proximity with the surprising complexity of Appalachian culture and illustrates a life-affirming solution to what could have been a dead end existence.
In her book Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobby Ann Mason and Lee Smith, Paula Gallant Eckard offers insights into why the book is deserving of critical attention and also why it might strike some people, especially White, Southern males, as controversial. “Her [Smith’s] Appalachian women characters by virtue of their gender and culture, stand in opposition to Eurocentric patriarchal traditions.” [Eckard, p. 133] She makes a clear distinction between the male and female experience in Appalachia; though the two are inextricably intertwined they are based on radically different perspectives: matriarchal versus patriarchal, linear versus non-linear dimensions of time, and “traditionally female immanent art,” like quilts, food and storytelling, which is inherently useful, versus “traditionally male transcendent art.” [from The World of Lee Smith, by Ann Goodwyn Jones].
“Male transcendent art” is identified with writing and Ivy Rowe, the chief protagonist in Fair and Tender Ladies, seeks to beak free of the restrictions that keep women in “their place,” which in the South has traditionally meant bare-foot and pregnant, through her letters. “Women who achieve voice in some way—whether through storytelling, personal narrative, songs, letters, or just plain talk—seek to survive the oppressiveness of their culture.” [ibid, p.134] Through her dedication to reading and writing, Ivy constructs abridge between the two traditions, finding her own voice in the process. “Thus, Ivy’s full engagement with language and with life leads to the development of a wholly integrated self within a culture that silences and destroys other women.” [p. 158]
Ivy seeks to redefine her life in her own words and in so doing she redefines the narrative tradition in which she is working. “Ivy clearly demonstrates Smith’s intent to reconceptualize women’s relationships to writing, the self, and society.” [p. 162] Ivy’s pregnancies and maternal experiences follow a well-trodden path which is reflected in other women writers over the years. “Her language evokes images of entrapment and death not unlike those found in the works of Gilman, Dickinson, Woolf, Plath, and the Brontë sisters, writers that Ivy has read or to whom Smith otherwise alludes.” [p. 164]
In the Eurocentric, patriarchal tradition, women serve at a man’s pleasure. In Judeo-Christian folklore they represent all that is pure and the virginal. In the days of chivalry, knights defended the honor of fair maidens and troubadours extolled their virtuous charms. Of course, women have always enjoyed an iconic status in the South, far removed from the gritty reality of the lives they are sometimes forced to live (as portrayed so vividly in Fair and Tender Ladies). The literary tradition that has emerged from this heritage, referred to earlier as “male transcendent art,” seeks to place women on a pedestal and leave them there. Supporters of this tradition are not interested in the possibility of women within our culture having “wholly integrated selves.” Rather, they are anxious to adhere to the two-dimensional, biblical stereotype of woman as man’s “helpmeet.”
Ivy describes her sexuality and childbirth with what Eckard calls “loud vocalization.” Ivy’s description graphically demonstrates the merging of body and voice.” [p. 167] “Smith invokes a primal female power and establishes a maternal voice that echoes the body’s experience, producing a kind of language that is radically dissimilar from symbolic paternal language.” [p. 168] Patriarchs have always feared and sought to subjugate primal female power. And as the present controversy suggests the threatening maternal voice is one that they feel needs to be silenced.
Note: Since the 1998 edition of Fair and Tender Ladies was added to our collection the six copies acquired by the Library have circulated over a hundred times, with 32 renewals. We can't say for certain how often previous editions may have circulated but that the level of interest has been sustained over almost two decades speaks volumes about the value of the work as well as the level of discernment among the local population.
Sources:
Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobby Ann Mason and Lee Smith, Paula Gallant Eckard. Accessed through NetLibrary 10/03/07
“The Voice Behind the Stories,” in Voicelust: Eight Contemporary Fiction Writers on Style, by Lee Smith (Allen Wier and Don Hendrie, Jr., editors)