Narrating Women's Space - Book Report/Review Example

Use of Space in “Fear and Flying” by Erica Jong al Affiliation) This narrative by Erica Jong is a super-feminine and an analyzation of a lady’s desire in some ways. It is an inhibited story of Isadora Wing and all of hewr desires to free herself of which in the process, causes a national sensation (Jong, 2013). The novel presents sexuality and finds a lot ot themes such as love, history, sex, religion, and relationships (Cross-Smith, 2013). We consider this space as personal because of the expression that causes an interior feeling within her only.

Isadora Wing, who happens to be the protag in this book, is a poet on her twenty ninth years (Cross-Smith, 2013). While she is in Vienna with her husband, she sees another man whom she becomes interested in and goes on to pursue him. Her husband becomes aware of this as well as the man she desires knows about her husband. The important aspect here is that, while she expresses her feelings and sexual desires, she doesn’t feel the urge to make them masculine (Cross-Smith, 2013). This shows that a feminine desire is just feminine.

This shows distribution of space among the characters (Jong, 2013). She has to go to Vienna for her to meet the other character whom she desires. This reflects different gender space among the characters shown in this book. She happens to change her geographical locations to achieve this (Jong, 2013). When Isadora feels captured and trapped by her past, her present and her future, she openly searches for something to make her free again. Sometimes it’s herself and her abilities while sometimes its someone else.

She finds a man called Dr. Adrian Goodlove and writes to him, “…I sit in the last row staring at Adrian. Adrian stares back at me. He sucks on his pipe as if he were sucking on me. His hair falls over his eyes. He brushes it back. My hair falls over my back. I brush it back….”(Jong, 2013) She then says later that Adrian was a dream and Bennett was her reality and that if she happened to lose him, she even won’t be able to remember her own name. This just frankly shows that Jong is interested in the idea of marriage and coupling and what those things are and aren’t (Jong, 2013).

She discusses gain of power and loss of power in terms of love and relationships and their meanings. She also shows that there are several issues that are always okay for men to talk about but not for women (Cross-Smith, 2013). Jong uses effective and most romantic words and expression as narrative devices to try and explain the happening of an event in a certain plot. She orders events to build a romantic moment in an event that would switch the reader into believing that the event is real. She also withholds information until an important and crucial or an appropriate moment appears so as to create suspense (Cross-Smith, 2013).

Such devices are seen to create a personal space or a normalized space. She even uses the suspension of disbelief in different occasion such as the quotes above, to enter the reader into a romantic world hence the acceptance of this story’s diegesis (Cross-Smith, 2013).References Cross-Smith, L. (2013). The Female Gaze. Retrieved from Female Gaze Review: www.femalegazereview.comJong, E. (2013). Fear of Fying: Fourtieth Anniversary Edition. New York: Open Road Media.