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A review by tomleetang
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
2.0
Written in a strange, almost stilted style - I think Truman Capote described it as being written as though in translation from other languages - Two Serious Ladies is filled with eccentrics and hysterics. It reads like all the characters' interiority (particularly the two titular ladies) has moved to the exterior, so that women are made to seem emotionally unstable all the time while the men are infantile and seeking succour (and to suck) from the breast of womanhood.
"I have gone to pieces, which is a thing I've wanted to do for years," says Mrs Copperfield (one of the Two Serious Ladies) at one point, and it seems to me that this sums up both women's desire to shatter their comfortable, ordinary lives in search of more seedy, immersive experiences. Mrs Copperfield is disdainful of her husband's attempts to explore local culture; for her it has to be about diving into the sordidness of local life, seeking out its grim underbelly of whores and grifters, rather than its shining lights.
Maybe I was meant to feel sorry for Mrs Copperfield and how her husband drags her along like baggage, all while she is undergoing a nascent exploration of lesbianism. But actually what I really felt was irritation at her histrionics - perhaps symptomatic of the infantilisation of women, though that explanation doesn't make her any less exasperating.
While Miss Goering also seeks to escape her gilded cage of privilege, her descent into the world involves creating a kind of losers club, attracting the flotsam and jetsam of society to her wake as she seeks to ... Save them? Suck up their experiences like some kind of psychic vampire? The only way to become 'serious' seems to be to drink in the misery of life, and yet Mrs Copperfield and Miss Goering do it so ineffectually that their attempts to do so become comedic - and a little dull.
"I have gone to pieces, which is a thing I've wanted to do for years," says Mrs Copperfield (one of the Two Serious Ladies) at one point, and it seems to me that this sums up both women's desire to shatter their comfortable, ordinary lives in search of more seedy, immersive experiences. Mrs Copperfield is disdainful of her husband's attempts to explore local culture; for her it has to be about diving into the sordidness of local life, seeking out its grim underbelly of whores and grifters, rather than its shining lights.
Spoiler
Considering she becomes a hollowed-out alcoholic by the end of the novel (at least according to Miss Goering), it doesn't seem like the most salubrious method.Maybe I was meant to feel sorry for Mrs Copperfield and how her husband drags her along like baggage, all while she is undergoing a nascent exploration of lesbianism. But actually what I really felt was irritation at her histrionics - perhaps symptomatic of the infantilisation of women, though that explanation doesn't make her any less exasperating.
While Miss Goering also seeks to escape her gilded cage of privilege, her descent into the world involves creating a kind of losers club, attracting the flotsam and jetsam of society to her wake as she seeks to ... Save them? Suck up their experiences like some kind of psychic vampire? The only way to become 'serious' seems to be to drink in the misery of life, and yet Mrs Copperfield and Miss Goering do it so ineffectually that their attempts to do so become comedic - and a little dull.