Comic Visions, Female Voices: Contemporary Women Novelists and Southern Humor.

BAUER, MARGARET

Comic Visions, Female Voices: Contemporary Women Novelists and Southern Humor, by Barbara Bennett. Southern Literature Studies series. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998.xiii, 135 pp. $27.50 cloth.

WITHIN HER STUDY BARBARA BENNETT WRITES, "Sometimes, for a woman to know what she does not want is as important as knowing what she wants, and separating herself from false images of the southern woman is the first step toward liberation" (p. 119). This statement illustrates how the value of her literary study goes beyond providing literary analyses of writers whose work has not yet received much critical attention. This book would be enjoyed by general readers interested in Southern culture and, more particularly, by Southern women for insight into the role of humor in their own lives. For example, Bennett goes on from the preceding statement to argue that "Humor ... must be taken very `seriously' because it often signals the presence of some other emotion. Rage, for example," which Bennett then proceeds to say "can be an extremely successful vehicle for change" (p. 119). Comic Visions, Female Voices is, ultimately, a Southern feminist study that proceeds from literary analysis to cultural critique.

Bennett begins by outlining the issues central to her study: "the `southernness' of the writing, the contemporary setting, and the female perspective" (p. 2), in preparation for her exploration of how these Southern writers provide a "new voice and vision"--a voice and vision that differ from what one finds in the traditional Southern literary canon. Her first point of distinction--that these contemporary writers' tone is "more optimistic and less guilt ridden than that found in fiction written by men or by their literary predecessors" (p. 2)--echoes Fred Hobson's study of The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World, which includes the absence of guilt as a distinction between contemporary Southern literature in general and earlier Southern literature. However, Bennett goes on to point out how the woman writer "challeng[es] traditional relationships" even while "affirming the self and family," which seems to suggest that the distinction lies in the optimism one finds in such challenge and affirmation. Again like Hobson, Bennett notes how contemporary Southern writers--writers who "have produced the major portion of their work since 1970" (p. 15)--are less intimidated by Faulkner's legacy, but then Bennett turns her examination to the female "legends" in whose footsteps contemporary female writers must follow--Welty and O'Connor--and argues that these contemporary women are less intimidating because their work has not been lauded so extensively by critics.

Like many recent feminist readers of Faulkner, Bennett is disturbed by Faulkner's reason for not giving Caddy a voice--i.e., that her voice would undermine her beauty; Bennett points out that this attitude "equates beauty with silence" (p. 18) and that silencing a woman results in stifling her sense of humor. This sense of humor Bennett sees as empowering. It helps people to communicate; it exposes and satirizes status quo; it helps one to deal with tragedy. When women are encouraged to laugh at men's jokes but not tell their own, such silencing takes away the power of storytelling--the control over how the story is told and thus the point that listeners derive from the story, the person with whom they will sympathize. Furthermore, Bennett later argues, men are threatened by the idea of women laughing at them.

Again, then, humor is empowering--of course, that is, when one is making people laugh or laughing with others rather than being laughed at--which brings up one of Bennett's more provocative points: the distinctions she makes between male and female humor. For example, according to Bennett, "women target the powerful rather than the powerless and rarely ridicule an aspect of a person or society that cannot be changed" (p. 13). Women employ humor, Bennett continues, to critique the patriarchy and other "sacred institutions" and to bring people together. Women find solidarity in humorous stories told by other women, validation that since this happened to someone else too, they are not alone or crazy (men, in contrast, focus on topping the story told with one of their own).

In her chapter on black and scatological humor, Bennett shows how distinctions between male and female humor are fading. Contemporary Southern women writers are not hesitant to satirize traditional obsession with "dishonor, disgrace, defeat," and dying well (p. 74). And they are just as likely to find and point out the humor in their own bodily functions. Even the female hormonal cycle provides material for comedy, in contrast to its past role in the tragedies of supposedly mad women characters. Bennett, therefore, does not find women's employment of black or scatological humor as a sign of stooping to the level of men, who, again, direct their black humor at their supposed inferiors and whose crass humor often reflects their insecurities about their "manhood." Rather, she sees women's employment of such "low form [s] of humor" as "one more barrier broken, one more limitation challenged, and one less secret kept, allowing women to explore areas once considered taboo" (p. 83).

Other chapters explore the humorous treatment of religion, sex, and stereotypes in the South by contemporary Southern women novelists. As indicated previously, Bennett's study goes beyond her literary subjects. She shares her research into theories about women's comedy. In contrast to male writers, women find humor, rather than tragedy, in the disruption of order--not surprisingly since order implies patriarchal rule, the end of which would not be so "tragic" for women. Bennett suggests that since the disruption may be only temporary, one might as well laugh. Tears won't change anything. On the other hand, Bennett concludes her study by noting the optimism of these contemporary works, an optimism that comes from a recognition of their endurance in spite of the tragedy within the world. Further, she discusses how humor might be used to effect change that would end some of the tragedy of life in the South: "By parodying social structures, women challenge whether those structures--such as the class system ... --are necessary or valid" (p. 119). The humor in these writers' works provides a much more realistic view of the South than has been depicted previously. From this realistic portrayal, Bennett argues, one can work more effectively toward a brighter future for the oppressed.

Bennett's book provides somewhat lengthy examinations of Josephine Humpreys's Rich in Love, Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country, Anne Tyler's The Clock Winder, Kaye Gibbons's Charms for the Easy Life, Tina McElroy Ansa's Ugly Ways, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, and Lisa Alther's Kinflicks. Numerous other works are given a glimpse for illustration. The one significant absence this reader noted is Ellen Gilchrist. Bennett looks at Gilchrist's Starcarbon, arguably not among the writer's best work. Bennett's focus, however, is on women novelists, and the best sources of Gilchrist's humor, which might have served well to illustrate, in particular, contemporary Southern women writers use of black humor, are her short stories. The same is true for many of the writers Bennett mentions briefly, including Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, who are also most humorous in their short fiction. Bennett touches upon the comic moments in their novels to illustrate relevant points.

MARGARET BAUER
East Carolina University