Redefining Women’s Sexuality: Isadora in Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying

Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir encapsulated an argument in her classic analysis of women, The Second Sex that sets the tone for contemporary feminism: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (273). Feminist theory has recurrently voiced its concerns regarding women’s sexuality and their subjugation on this account. Women’s sexuality has always been excluded as mysterious or insignificant. Feminist writers argue that such depictions of women’s sexuality, desire and fantasies have been man made. Since women and their sexuality was confounded, objectified and commercialised in a mainstream hegemonic/ patriarchal set up, feminists across the globe promoted a peep into female sexuality from a female point of view. This led to a movement that demanded an autonomous right of women to own their bodies as they are. “The female body”, according to Jasbir Jain “is controlled by patriarchal morality, and by the roles of wifehood and motherhood. Thus any attempt to seek selfhood or project subjectivity, or to work towards self-expression and freedom, has to work through the body” (119). With the advent of sexual revolution, women writers like Erica Jong refuted the male views about women and tried to rewrite the traditional stereotypes associated with women.