Gender and Jewish Culture

The Single Woman

26     Popular culture, and particularly, the masculine perspective percolating through the literary canon, have decreed that the single woman is to be pitied and censured for her sexual unacceptability, and her failure to find a suitable mate. In the main, this has been achieved through a cruel and dispraising portrayal, in a writing tradition with a long history. As Rogers explains, the spinster has continually functioned as the subject of ridicule in mainstream literature: "The old maid has provided an even more convenient butt for hostility against women, since she did not justify her existence by being a wife and a mother [. . .] caricatured as ugly, disagreeable, and relentlessly in pursuit of men" (201). Certainly, there has been a lack of positive images of the single woman in male fiction.

27     The stock image of the unmarried woman has been one of a forlorn and frustrated figure, who due to her inability (or refusal) to wed has been derided, scorned and isolated by society as some kind of deviant. Deegan, who conducted one of the first major studies into the representation of the 'unattached' female in popular fiction, concluded, that male authors have subjected the old maid to pillorying which has not extended to male bachelors. In her investigation, she discerned certain assumed feminine qualities that these characters were assigned by the purveyors of this stereotype, qualities that recurred with disturbing familiarity and which maintained the mendacious impression that single women were desperate for a man to marry.

28     A single woman of considerable sadness and loneliness is Geula Sirkin of the stories "Nomad and Viper" and "Before His Time." The prescient male narrator loads up his characterisation with condescension and pity, depicting her as a figure of mockery in the Kibbutz and repeatedly nullifying, in the guise of sympathy, any positive attributes she may possess. As Deegan found in the portrayal of unmarried woman, "The most marked characteristic [. . .] is the repeated reference to unattractive physical qualities, more often that not to ugliness of face or angularity of form" (105). And indeed, from the very outset Geula's unpleasant appearance is accentuated: "Her face was pale and thin [. . .]. A pair of bitter lines were etched at the corners of her mouth [. . .]. On hot days, when faces are covered in sweat, the acne on her cheeks reddened and she seems to have no hope" (Oz 27-28). In "Before His Time" the emphasis on Geula as homely and graceless continues:

Her nails are cracked, her hands are rough and scabby, and there are two bitter creases at the corners of her mouth. Her legs are thin and pale and covered with a down of black hairs. That is why she always wears trousers, never a skirt or a dress. And although she is now more than twenty years old, there are still adolescent pimples on her cheeks. (Oz 65)

29     In Kibbutz matters she is a cipher, her contribution confined to that of preparing coffee for cultural and social meetings: a participation which is not unnoticed by the narrator. With a dollop of irony he points out that although still without a husband , her ability to make the finest coffee whenever needed was always appreciated by the members'. This comment would seem to accord with Deegan's conclusions about the attitudes expressed by central or secondary characters towards the unmarried female protagonist: "Some characters express pity and ridicule [. . .] some kind of admiration is often mingled with adverse attitudes" (105). Importantly, in the main introduction the narrator fleetingly refers to her age of twenty nine, implying that with every passing day her plight is worsening and that is why she is such an embittered and morose character: "I avoid her glance, so as not to have to face her mocking sadness" (Oz, "Nomad" 28). Similarly: "Geula Sirkin, the surviving child of Zeshka and Dov, wakes up in hatred and rises to wash her face under the cold water faucet" (Oz, "Before" 65). All in all, in the phallocratic domain, Geula is seen only in terms of her marital status and not as an individual. Rightly, Bachur remarks that Geula represents the epitome of loneliness in the Kibbutz (13).

30     Conversely, her late younger brother was proclaimed a legend in the army, promoted to a commander of his own battalion at twenty three. Indeed, even after his death his military exploits are still spoken of with reverence: how he partook in all the reprisal raids, sick with pneumonia blew up an Arab police-station and alone captured a notorious terrorist and six of his crew (Oz, "Before" 66). His few visits to the Kibbutz "[. . .] had been a delight to the unmarried girls. And sometimes to the married girls as well [. . .]. He just burst out laughing and asked why they were all hanging around him, as if they had no homes to go to, as if they had nothing to do" (66)