During the Spring
2004 semester at
The Clodhopper Effect
By Jessica Soady�
One
common theme in Singer's "Brother Beetle,"
Whatever gratification of pride there is in the possession of power, and whatever personal interest in its exercise, is in this case not confined to a limited class, but common to the whole male sex.... It comes home to the person and hearth of every male head of a family, and of everyone who looks forward to being so. The clodhopper exercises, or is to exercise, his share of the power equally with the highest nobleman (10).
In his visit with Dosha, Singer, a successful author by then, after years of
struggle, thought that he could renew his sexual relationship with her, enjoy
the danger, give her a few American dollars and continue on his tour of
Like Minit Man and Cowboy in Mamie's kitchen, Singer only began to recognize Dosha's power when it was too late. As Singer and Dosha approached her apartment he noted that: "Insects beat against the glass of the street lamps crazed with lust" (129), but it is Singer, not the insects, who is "crazed with lust."�� At this point, Dosha is actually in full control as, "unprofaned by any past betrayal" (129), she led him up the stairs of the building. Interestingly, once trapped naked on the roof, Singer called upon his maleness as a source of power and direct connection to God, as a "child of Adam," (131) in his hope that the stars above would take pity on him. Dosha showed that her power to know herself and to control her world was as at least as great as his, when she brought him his things, including his American passport and money. She paused only to make fun of his predicament before silently revealing the trap door where he could escape: "She grimaced and stuck out her tongue in mockery" (132). Dosha might have been poor and driven mad by her art, but she was more in touch with her own identity than Singer was with his.
"Source" is also a story about male
privilege and unstable identities. Anastasia spent her life searching for who
she was and who she was comfortable being.��
In her college days, she had shifted back and forth between black and
white, having attempted at one time to be like Faye Dunaway and then turning to
the Black Power mode of Kathleen Cleaver. Her tragedy was that in all of these
shifts, she had been defined by powerful males who spoke for God and spiritual
values. In the first instance, she allowed her wealthy father to shape her
self-image in combination with Source whom they paid to keep her on the
straight and narrow. Her parents had converted from Baptist to Jehovah's
Witnesses, a change that brought the full force of male godly authority down on
her in addition to the control exercised by Source. When she reconnected with
her parents, she received letters urging her to the right path: "There was
a lot in the letter about continuing to love her and even more about continuing
to petition Jehovah God in her behalf (
Because her parents were conflicted about their own racial identities, they paid Source to make Anastasia part of a commune where she was led to believe in Source's teachings that "nobody's anything" (151). By making her subservient to Source, who used all women for his personal benefit, her parents felt that they had at last found for her the path of obedience: "This father now wrote of God's love, God's grace, God's assured forgiveness and of his own happiness that his daughter, always, at heart, 'a good girl,' had at last embarked on the path of obedience" (148). Irene, whose undeniably dark complexion had never allowed her to question her basic identity as a black woman, immediately saw Source for the sexual oppressor and "racist" (152) that he was, and simply responded to the content of Anastasia's letters from home with the words "holy shit!" (148).�� Irene, refused to give in to the male oppression represented by Source and continued to insist that African identity mattered. As a consequence of her opinions, she was asked to leave the house shared by Anastasia, Peace, Calm, and the baby, Bliss, because of her "bad vibes" (154).
When
Anastasia and Irene met some years later in
Unlike Anastasia, who is still somewhat defined by her relationship with a male, Mamie and her daughters in "Dogs in a Pack" had few illusions left about the holiness of male privilege or the superiority of the "clodhopper" by the time Cowboy and Minit Man decided to pay their return visit. When the two men were begging for their lives, or at least a last word, in the tobacco shed while Mamie held them at gunpoint, Cowboy asked "You mean we gonna...? You just gone shoot us down like dogs?"�� Mamie replied: "Well, boys, I been knowed to give a man his last say. But I ain't even gone stoop to jawing with y'all over what is and ain't right. I feel like I been through that before" (Daugharty 8). Mamie, who was well prepared for them in advance, had obviously been through something like this before and was used to dealing with "scum floating along the Alapaha" (11).
The tension in this story turns on the very fact that these worthless escaped convicts, who are the worst examples of Mill's "clodhopper," believe in their everlasting superiority over any woman. These men simply assumed that they had the right to rape or use women as they saw fit and that women had no brains or physical strength with which to resist. Cowboy and Minit Man were so confident of their power that, like Singer, they allowed their lust to be their downfall (literally). When Cowboy was ready to take Allie outside to have his way with her, he attempted to hand the gun to Minit Man who let it drop to the floor because he was too busy mauling Allie: "He tries to hand the pistol, handle first, to his buddy, but Minit Man has one hand down Kiki's shirt and the other on his crotch" (5). At this point, Mamie raised her pistol from beneath the table and took charge of the situation. Once they realized that they were staring down the barrel of Mamie's gun, Cowboy and Minit Man still continued to make reference to the fact they had been overcome by a "bunch of gals" (6) or a few "crazy bitches" (8). They continued to hold to the possibility that if they could tell tales from their sad lives, they would somehow be allowed to leave by influencing the emotions of weak women. Minnie, the "daft" one, put an end to this fantasy by revealing that even she saw through male, cowardly lies: ".. .maybe everybody's like you two, dogs in a pack. No guts by yourself and nothing to get to know. And us chunking eggs 'cause we ain't got nothing else...sad, ain't it?" (12).
Each of these three stories illustrated how assumptions of male privilege and authority proved to be illusions when women form and act from strong personal identities. In "Brother Beetle," an encounter with an unusual artist bent on survival caused Isaac Bashevis Singer to question the meaning of his existence. In "Source," the powerful combination of male authority and spirituality could not stop Anastasia's journey to self-define. In "Dogs in a Pack," two ultimate "clodhoppers," out to claim their "rights" to women, end up jumping down a dry hole at gunpoint and waiting for the sheriff to arrive.
Works Cited
Daugharty, Janice. "Dogs in a Pack." Going Through the Change: Stories by Janice Daugharty. Ed. Janice Daugharty.
Mansfield, Sue, ed. The
Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill.
Singer, Isaac Bashevis. Trans. Isaac Bashevis Singer and
Elizabeth Shub. "Brother Beetle." Old Love. Ed. Isaac Bashevis
Singer.��
Walker,