Evident Hardness

by

Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer

 

David is David Plante and Jean, Sonia, and Germaine are Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell, and Germaine Greer. They appear in the stories told by Plante in his 1983 book Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, each chapter devoted to the author’s personal interactions and friendships with one of the three. As he recounts it, Plante comes across as too agreeable, intimidated, and fawning, seeking out the company of accomplished, celebrated, and famous women primarily for the cache´ their friendship will impart. But in addition to prestige, their company gives us a primer in the figure of the difficult woman, the promise she holds, the challenges she poses.

- Jean rants drunk; she is sour, glum, depressive and apathetic, even suicidal. She is bitter and old. Clutching her fourth glass of gin, she convinces herself through repetition and insistence that nothing matters, she is misunderstood and wronged, her work is mediocre (“My books aren’t important”), but she must write through to the end of her life: “Only writing is important. Only writing takes you out of yourself.” Only writing and alcohol. Every conversation and writing session Plante relates begins and ends on the rocks, so to speak: sweet vermouth, wine, rum, gin… “Give me another drink first, honey.” At constant pains to communicate understanding, himself a little soused, David generally smiles and nods agreeably. But there was that one time – “And she would look at me, her face hard, and say, ‘You don’t understand.’ Once, angry, I said, ‘I do understand.’”

- Sonia holds court, presiding over London’s cultural elite at dinner parties she throws at her home. There she can be tyrannical, often in a way that is exceedingly proper and chillingly civilized: “Whenever I did speak up, Sonia glared at me and said, ‘That’s silly.’ I kept sweating.” Her friends are her family and she is matriarchal. She is emotionally guarded and private, always occupying (distracting) herself in company with mundane activities and other people’s problems, of which she is critical. Gossip, society, and wine seem to be decoys. David proceeds on eggshells around her and wonders, “Why was I drawn to a woman – and, when I consider it, to women – who made me feel so isolated, and made me question myself body and soul?” The attraction continues, with added strength.

- Germaine, seen here, as the youngest of the three, is the largest and most in command of both an educated intellect and embodied sexuality. She seems to know every language fluently, have a technical knowledge of specialized labor, and innately possesses an informed opinion on any possible topic of conversation. “With Germaine, there was always the fear of stating the obvious." She has the energy and drive of a young activist. ‘Fuck’ commonly runs through her judgments and observations. She leaves the door open to David’s room when she takes a bath, casually changes where he can see her naked, and is so comfortable in her tall body that she farts freely and loudly points out her own cellulite.

David chooses his words carefully and seeks approval, knowing she may be restless, already tiring of his company. But with her he can at least let down his guard a little and pretend her full-bodied warmth is actually deep intimacy.

Jean, Sonia, Germaine.
They are all extraordinarily hard to impress, maybe unimpressionable. They are all difficult and, not coincidently, they are deeply involved in literature as great readers and writers. And, though he needs them (despite their intimidation), David knows they do not need him. He knows they sometimes wish he would leave. I imagine this is enough to send him off, obligingly, and to keep him coming back.

Jean, Sonia, and Germaine: Good-bye David.

Women can be difficult in many ways. But difficult is not weak. A weak woman is easy, not difficult. She might even be considered agreeable, pleasing, deferential, manageable. A difficult woman on the other hand, is more problematic. She is often unwieldy and loud, complicated and opaque, but, most of all, she is strong. Her strength takes different forms, appearing at times in her confidence, her independence, her brashness, her composure, her silence as well as her chatter; her opinions and rules, stubbornness and contrariness, fluency and intimidation, assertiveness and unpredictability. Each woman’s difficulty is both the product and source of her strength. Plante’s difficult women necessarily come into their own particular difficulties through language, becoming most themselves when read as text written on the page  both in the essays and books they authored and in Plante’s literary portrait of them.

Jean, Sonia, and Germaine’s difficulty is characterized by a hardness that is related to their strength and twinned with toughness. The matter of a woman’s difficulty is harder than temperament alone and different from tantrum. It is, as much or more than anything, hard because her femininity is hard too — hard to crack and full of surprises. A hard femininity, while possible – possibly attractive, threatening, and powerful – might seem to present an initial oxymoron that points to the trouble we might have recognizing, understanding, and reacting to it. Their tough combination of strength, language, and femininity make these difficult women, difficult to read, unreadable as in hard to grasp or to cleanly understand. But the same difficulty that makes them hard to get also makes them easy to read – readable, (as in immensely pleasurable and easy for me to read.)