Female Role Models

Fear of Flying follows one month in the life of young wife Isadora Wing, who journeys to Germany with her psychoanalyst husband, Bennett, to cover a professional conference and embarks on her own quest for sexual adventure. Shelley Fisher Fishkin, in her essay on Jong for the American Writers Series, argues that one of Isadora's most notable qualities was her awareness of how gender roles were constructed in contemporary society:

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her lack of knowledge about her own identity. Fishkin notes the women readers in the 1970s could identify easily with Isadora's lack of confidence, with her self-doubt, her ambivalence, and confusion (Fishkin). She argues that although the Zipless Fuck may have garnered much press attention, women readers were probably more interested in Isadora's search for her own identity, her own soul. Notably, the women's movement during the 1970s transformed American society, and Fear of Flying appeared just as that movement was coming into its own (Fishkin). Thus, the novel became a cultural document because it spoke frankly about sex and sexuality through the mouth of a woman. In particular, the sex object was talking back. And Fishkin notes that the object was talking back assertively and aggressively. Thus, conflicted and confused as were much as were her readers, Isadora nonetheless broke out of the role in which society cast her in and gave birth to a new self (Fishkin). Erica Jong has stated that her own mother was a victim of the limiting gender and sex roles assigned to women up until the 1970s. However, Jong recalls that her mother's sacrifice of her own art for her domestic role meant her mother seemed "always angry" (Fishkin):
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Approximate Word count = 1827
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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