Faith in the Female Voice - Grace Paley`s "Dreamer in a Dead Language"

Hauptseminararbeit English

"Modern American Short Stories" WS 1996/97

Faith in the Female Voice - Grace Paley's

"Dreamer in a Dead Language"

term paper

by

Paul Michel

Grace Paley? A truely postmodernist author, oh yes. But write a paper on one of her short stories? They do not really seem to go anywhere, do they? Where is the plot, what is the meaning?

Paley's fiction deals with ordinary women, children and families. The stories are set in everyday places like homes, playgrounds, stores. Nothing special, so it seems. It is difficult to get a grasp of why we are fascinated by some of Paley's short, seemingly simple stories.

Is it her style of narration? Is it her sort of humour? Is it the distictly female voice? What makes Grace Paley's fiction special and important? How does she make use of character?

In order to find answers to these questions it is essential to look at one of Paley's stories more closely. In this paper our focus will be on the story "Dreamer in a Dead Language", a story which was written in the early to midseventies and published in Paley's third collection of stories, Later the Same Day.¹

In discussing one of her short stories, one can never be certain if it is possible to get a full understanding of the events and characters if the reader is not familiar with Paley's previous stories. Characters and places reappear in different pieces of her work. Limiting an analysis on only one singular story poses the danger of missing essential contextual information.

Many single stories were published in magazines. "Dreamer in a Dead Language" first appeared in American Review in 1977². We can be reassured that this story and others are not necessarily supposed to be read in the context of one of her three collections of stories.³ By publishing stories seperately, the author implies that the particular story can indeed stand for itself. And maybe we should follow Jonathan Baumbach's recommendation to critics to treat each story on its own. He believes that Each of Paley's stories is a seperate discovery, as if she begins each time out to learn what it is to make a story.⁴

In this essay I will concentrate on the way the female protagonist Faith is treated by her environment and how she reacts to it. I will focus on the other characters only insofar as they deal with Faith and show how they misunderstand Faith and treat her as an object.

The humor Paley uses is of a special kind. I will analyze its use and its function in the story. Finally it will be shown why we can classify the story as postmodernist .

"Dreamer in a Dead Language" is told by a third-person narrator with a restricted point of view. It is a story about misunderstandings and conflicts between generations, partners, men and women. The protagonist is Faith, a middle-aged mother of two children, Tonto and Richard. She is divorced from her childrens' father, Ricardo. We also find out more about one of her lovers, Philip Mazzano.

The story has three parts. In the first part, Faith and Philip discuss the poetry of Faith's father Mr. Sid Darwin.

Philip plans to help publish Mr. Darwins work and suggests the title "Dreamer in a Dead Language" for it. He also expresses his wish to be introduced to Faith's parents.

The central part of the story, part two, is set in a home for the elderly, "Children of Judea, Home for the Golden Ages, Coney Island Branch". Faith visits her parents there, accompanied by Tonto and Richard. In the course of her visit, Faith talks to her mother and quarrels with her father. In a dramatic moment Philip bursts in unexpectedly. Feeling angry and generally misunderstood, Faith leaves and takes the children with her.

In the third and final part of the story Faith is on Brighton Beach and converses with her sons.

By taking a closer look at the conflicts between the main characters, I will try to show in which ways Faith is misunderstood, put-upon and degraded to an object and how she reacts to these notions.

The first part of the story is centred on two themes: Philip's business plans to publish Mr. Darwins poetry and his memories and comments about Anita, his ex-wife and Faith's friend. Philip expresses his desire to meet Faith's parents, especially Mr. Darwin and gets exited about the possiblity of bringing out a volume of poems to be called "Dreamer in a Dead Language". Faith is bothered by his business interests and does not intend to take Philip when visiting her parents. She employs different techniques to stop Philip, none of which turns out to be too successful.

Philip explains that after leaving his wife Anita, he had missed her parents most and complains that the latter do not talk to him now. He laments that "People take everything personally. I don't, he said."(13) At this point, Faith is starting to get annoyed. She might not want to hear anything at all about how Philip hurt Anita, which she points out later. She might also be aggravated by Philips general lack of sensitivity towards the feeling of others, the feelings parents share with their deserted daughter. Certainly people take things personally; to differentiate between doing something to the parents "personally" or to them in their function as the family of a suffering ex- wife is a male attempt to abstractly seperate spheres where no seperation is possible. In any case, Faith does not confront Philip with what annoys her but chooses to stop him short by correcting his way of addressing her parents.

Philip can't be stopped, though. He cannot sleep for exitement and wants to persuade Faith to let him accompany her to see her parents. He reminds her of her ex-husband Ricardo, at whom she is angry for several reasons. The reader finds out about Faith's problems with Ricardo later.

Faith offers "Sleepy time tea" and does not like to discuss the subject at all. As she still does not manage to calm Philip she mocks his behaviour:

Stop walking up and down. You'll wake the kids up. Phil, why does your voice get so squeaky when you talk business? It goes higher and higher. Right now your're above high C."(14)

This attempt fails as well and Philip proceeds and criticises Anita, "the thoughtless begetting of children" and the "vengeance of alimony" (14). These remarks finally force Faith to react. Although she "hated the idea of giving up the longed-for night in which sleep, sex and affection take their happy turns", she attacks Philip openly and her eyes fill with tears. Philip does not understand why Faith behaves this way and asks what he did wrong. Then he claims to understand his fault, but the reader cannot be too certain of that . At last Faith manages to distract him by changing the subject to poetry.

The first part of "Dreamer in a Dead Language" shows Faith's lover Philip at a peak of unsensitivity and lack of understanding of Faith's needs. He attempts to use her as a mere vehicle to meet Mr. Darwin and to pursue his business interests. He pokes at the absent Ricardo who he sees as a rival.

Faith is expected to listen to his plans and act as an amplifier for his ego and great ideas. She is supposed to put aside her own worries and take part in discussing subjects that Philip brings up. At first, she acts against his expectations by giving him hints to stop, then ridicules him until she is finally forced to speak up and attack, something which she has been trying to prevent. The attack causes her tears and finally stops Philip.

This is Paley at her best: Showing an everyday communicative situation between partners and bringing forth the struggles of women as a central theme. "To shine a light on what's dark [in women's lives] and give it light." For Paley, that is the main purpose of a story, which she states in an interview by Kathleen Hulley.⁵

It can be strenuous to discuss a communicative situation in one of Paley's stories in great detail. I agree with Baumbach when he claims that Grace Paley's stories resist the intrusion of critical language about them, make it seem, no matter what, irrelevant and excessive. The stories are hard to write about because what they translate into has little relation, less than most explication to what they are: transformed events of the imagination.⁶

In the second part of the story, the narration focusses on conflicts between Faith and her parents. They expect her to meet their needs while they are not genuinly interested in hearing about Faith's concerns. In the analysis of the second part of the story, we will focus on Faith and her reactions to people, while leaving out most of the Darwin's and other old people's problems with their lives at the home for the elderly.

Shortly after Faith meets her father, the reader learns that Faith expects a strenuous afternoon at the "Home for the Golden Ages". "She was sorry that so much would have to happen before the true and friendly visit."(16)

One of the points of conflict between Faith and Mr. Darwin is Ricardo, who has visited Mr. Darwin and has

apparently made a good impression on the older man.⁷ Mr. Darwin demands that Faith should not talk bad about the boys' father in front of them, and claims that she and her former husband simply "got the wrong chemistry"

(16). The disagreement on the subject of Ricardo is taken up again later, after Faith's conversation with her mother and a long excurse on literature and old age by Mr. Darwin. Faith warns her father to be cautious about Ricardo, who has neither come to see his children nor paid back money he owes Faith. Mr. Darwin does not react sypathetically but defends Ricardo.

Ach Faith, I'm sorry I told you anything. On the subject of Ricardo, you're demented. (28)

Faith cannot believe she is insulted in that way, that she is treated as a child. She wonders about her father's lack of solidarity. He makes other accusing remarks and insinuates that Faith's behaviour is due to a too unpeaceful life, a "terrible neighborhood" and that her emotional reaction, possibly even her divorce, is entirely her own fault: "Maybe you call some of this business down on yourself."(28)

Later on, as Mr. Darwin explains that he and Mrs. Darwin were never really married because they were "a

different cut" from Faith, that they were idealists. This annoys Faith who thinks herself a far greater idealist. She wants to bring her father back to the "present ordinary world" and tells him that she has 3 lovers at the moment. She shocks him by claiming that she sleeps with 3 men in only one week.

Mr. Darwin's reaction is a reversion to middle-class cliché: He warns her not to tell her mother, wonders where they as parents went wrong though having tried to do their best. He thinks that she does it for financial reasons. These remarks escalate Faith's alienation. She can only react cynically:

Oh sure, they pay me all right. How'd you guess? They pay me with a couple of hours of their

valuable time. They tell me their troubles and why they're divorced and separated, and they let me make dinner once in a while. They play ball with the boys in Central Park on Sundays. Oh sure, Pa, I'm paid up to here. (31-32)

This account of her life is demystifying and heavily sarcastic. Faith mocks her father's old categories of thinking in which women serve as mere objects of men (but at least have an influence on who's object they want to be).

In these few sentences the reader also loses illusions about Faith's supposedly sexually liberated life-style. Instead of being emancipated from different duties, that the divorced Faith would have to fulfill in a marriage, she has to serve similar needs of the men she lives with now. She has to console them emotionally and cook for them, while they do not do her many favours except playing ball with the children, which also serves their own interests.⁸ One of Faith's concerns are her relationships, something she is not in peace with herself about. But Mr. Darwin makes no effort to put himself in her position, he asks not a single question about it. He is not interested in any of Faith's real problems, only in the ones he claims Faith to have.

He complety loses control about what he says and hits the bottom of insensitivity. He suggests psychiatric help for Faith and calls her crazy. Between Faith and her father, communication becomes totally impossible. Faith's only way to regain her identity as an adult and her integrity is to escape.

The communication between Faith and her mother is equally difficult but for different reasons. Mrs. Celia Darwin seems to have retreated into her own world to an even greater extent than her husband. The reader gets the impression that from the beginning their conversation follows a certain pattern from which there is no alternative. Faith seems to have come to terms with that a long time prior to her present visit. Mrs. Darwin asks questions about reproduction that can be typically identified as the ones of a mother. She wants to know about Faith's children and work and suggests jobs that she thinks would suit Faith.

Faith is hampered in reacting openly. She is hindered by the oppressive presence of Mrs. Hegel-Schtein, another of the old-age patients of the "Home for the Golden Ages". Mrs. Darwin realizes that but excuses Hegel-Schteins presence because Faith is two hours late. The narrator informs us that There was no way to talk. She bent her head down to her mother's shoulder. She was much taller and it was hard to do. Though awkward, it was necessary. Her mother took her hand - pressed it to her cheek. (22)

The reader gets a sense of the affection between mother and daughter but also of lost opportunities to communicate. This is another missed opportunity, because Celia Darwin cannot escape her pattern of polite behaviour and simply ask Hegel-Schtein to leave. Her excuse to Faith is simply a sign of her resignation to the expected conventional behaviour.

After the narrator's information that more intense communication is impossible, the conversation shifts back to motherly concerns. Celia Darwin comments on a boil on Faith's wrist and makes the connection to an unsufficient washing of the skin. Faith defends herself but both are interrupted by a pseudo-scientific excourse by Hegel- Schtein about psychological reasons for illness and the old women's own medical history.

Communication fails with both of Faith's parents. After everybody has come back to the Darwin's room - Faith in a state of angry bitterness, especially because of her father's insults - Philip Mazzano shows up unexpectedly to meet the Darwins and discuss Mr. Darwins poetry. Mr. Darwin's remark upon his entry must strike the reader as extremely funny. He shouts: "What's this. Which one is this?"(34), wondering about who of Faith's 3 lovers this one might be. The Darwins do not try to pacify the whole communicative situation. Mr. Darwin is just interested in who told Philip about his literary work. Mrs. Darwin expects her daughter to "get out the nice china".(34)

Philip finally asks Faith what he can do to help her. Resignated, she tells him to talk to her father. The level of absurdity of the whole afternoon makes her think: "This is probably a comedy, this crummy afternoon. Why?"(34) Faith cannot be stopped from leaving and escapes to Brighton Beach.

In the sand of the old Brighton Beach of her childhood Faith manages to regain her sense of self. She shares childhood memories with the two boys. Richard urges her to get her parents out of the home for the elderly: "It's your responsibility."(36) She defends herself, wants to know why everything has to be her responsibility and starts to cry.

We find an authorial intrusion:

She wanted to scream, Help! Had she been born ten, fifteen years later, she might have done so, screamed and screamed. Instead, tears made their usual protective lenses for the safe observation of misery. (36)

This authorial intrusion is typical for Paley: She undercuts sentimentality and pathos just before the conclusion of the story. She also brings in the fact of a changing female and feminist consciousness. Women growing up in a possibly less patriarchially dominated environment might not continue to swallow their pain. They might not turn aggressions against themselves but let them out, scream, find words for what hurts them.

Faith lies flat on the beach and tells the boys to bury her. When Richard, who takes her suggestion serious, gets upset, she tells him she was only joking. "I mean, bury me only up to here (...) so I can give you a good whack every now and then when you're too fresh."(36)

On the beach, Faith is able to play her one fully realized role. As a single mother she is occupied with taking care of her sons, while still being able to move around freely to a certain extent, she can be her wiggling whacking self.⁹

Tonto and Richard are portrayed as lovable young human beings. Tonto is quite sensible and straightforward. He makes reasonable estimations and does not ask stupid questions. Richard is more naive, but sensitive and caring.

In "Dreamer in a Dead Language", humour is a central motif. Humor itself is mentioned as a subject of converstion in the story. There are a few passages that make us laugh, because reading Paley we find ourselves in familiar, though absurd situations.

Paley uses the potential of humor to question male dominance and to challenge the status quo. Her feminist humor is transformative because it locates absurdity not in women's needs or perspectives, but in the mechanisms of the patriarchial world.¹⁰

One example for Paley's use of humor is when Faith mocks her father's idea that she sleeps with three men for money. Faith contrasts his opinion with a feminist perspective, that she receives much less than she has to pay to her lovers: she has to listen, comfort, spend time, feed. According to Jaqueline Taylor, we perceive passages like this to be funny because we realize the discrepancy between dominant definitions and the experiences of women. We also perceive the absurdity of dominant meanings.¹¹

In another instance in the story, Faith makes fun of Mr. Darwin's plans to deny his age and his claims that he is still young in a spiritual way. In spite of Mr. Darwin's claims he cannot catch up with Faith as she runs and tells her to slow down. This itself contradicts his "youth", but is enhanced by Faith's remark:

So. Oh boy! (...) You're a young man, I thought. You and Ricardo ought to get a nice East Side pad with a separate entrance so you can entertain separate girls. (32-33)

Faith makes fun of her father's desire to be a single man, a young man, an ideal man in listing one of such a male's characteristics according to dominant definition.

Paley's articulation of humor to show women's experiences has to be seen in the tradition of Jewish humor, which can be classified as "survivalist humor". A perfect example for survivalist humor can be found in "Dreamer in a Dead Language": Mr. Darwins tells the joke about an old Jew in Nazi Germany who cannot escape his perpetrators. In a travel agency the Jew learns that he cannot go anywhere and demands a new globe. Mr. Darwin is also Jewish, Faith and her sons stand in a Jewish tradition. The question has to be why Mr. Darwin makes a seemingly anti-semitic joke, in which Jews are the butt of the joke. Using this sort of humor is necessary for a muted, oppressed group. Taylor states that:

"The Jew of this story is in a seemingly hopeless situation and yet has hope. In one sense he is the butt of the joke, for his request for another globe is absurd. Yet in another sense he gives testimony to the strength of spirit that has enabled Jewish people to survive through centuries of vicious anti- semitism."¹²

Survivalist humor is used as a compensation of suffering, as a spark of optimism and hope against desillusionment.

It is a means that can be used by members of other oppressed groups to overcome mutedness. One such minority group is the old-aged. In the story, there are two examples for survivalist humor of the old.¹³

Paley has borrowed from a rich Jewish tradition of subversive humor. She employs this humor to make women's perspectives central in a world that defines them as marginal, thus contradicting male dominance.

"Dreamer in a Dead Language" is a postmodernist story. The characters are confronted with a world of chaos, a world without meaning. The reader finds out about gender and generation conflicts, but is not consoled by a perspective of an ideal world where these conflicts could be solved.

The characters have multiple identities. Faith is a single mother, a lover, a difficult daughter of old-age parents, a friend to her children who are allowed to criticize her. She has to assimilate to different environments, her behaviour has to change in order to fulfill the expectations different people place in her. Faith is willing and able to adapt to situations to a certain extent. She is quite patient with her parents and tries to tolerate their patronizing ways, but defends herself as people are insensitive and keep on trying to tell her how she should lead her life.

She fails in making her parents question their perspectives on life. Mr. and Mrs. Darwin are unsuccessful characters in a postmodern world because they cannot adapt to changing circumstances. They can only function in a limited space, in the "Home for the Golden Ages". In order to stabilize her sense of self, Faith has to escape from the powerful attempts of her parents to define her life. She runs away, taking her sons with her. On Brighton Beach, she regaines her sense of self. Due to this resolution, Faith can be seen as a successful character in the chaotic world of this postmodernist story. She manages to overcome her lack of orientation and regaines optimism and a positive image of herself.

In a postmodern world, nobody can claim to have an objective perspective on the things that happen around them. In postmodernist fiction, we cannot even trust the narrator's perspective. The narrator's version of the story is fallible. Reading Paley, the fact that there are no quotation marks when characters use direct speech adds to our confusion about the narrative technique that is employed. We cannot always be sure if a certain remark or thought is presented by a character or the narrator. Paley has a style which presents different explanations of the world by different characters. The explanations can even be contradictory.¹⁴

In one instance that could be classified as metafiction, a character in "Dreamer in a Dead Language" comments on the story itself. At the end of her visit to her parents, Faith remarks to herself: "This is probably a comedy, this crummy afternoon. Why?"(34) The story can be seen as a drama, with tragic incidents that "pile up to one another like the choreography of a Marx Brothers movie"¹⁵ and that lead to destruction. We cannot be sure if we are in a comedy or a tragedy, we react with both laughter and anguish.

In "Dreamer in a Dead Language", there is no talk about love as a concept. The relationships between the characters tend to be marked by violation rather than by affection. That is true for most of the relationships that are portrayed: The one between Ricardo and Faith, between Anita and Philip, Faith and Philip, Faith and her parents. Everybody has psychological scars from past relationships and problems with the ones in the present. The characters are lucky if they do not get on each other's nerves.

We are also not comforted (and reassured of an intact world) by a happy ending. Faith is safe in the final scene on Brighton Beach but we can be assured that the incidents that happend at the home for the elderly could be repeated on Faith's next visit. The characters do not develop, they do not really learn. The only exception is that Richard learns about Jewish humor. But he is not cured from his naivety.

If the reader looks for meaning in the story she/he will end up with putting her/his own meanings into it. We learn something about generation conflicts and power relations. We get insights into minority perspectives and draw our own conclusions.

Grace Paley is a very political writer. She reveals power relations between men and women and challenges the power of males to reproduce structures in which they can define meaning. The deconstruction of the male world forces us to react, to follow Paley in regarding the private sphere as genuinely political and to question patriarchal patterns of behavior and language.

These could already be perfect reasons for reading Paley and to recommend Paley's fiction to (pro-)feminist friends and macho aquaintances. But at the same time Paley's stories are funny and close-to-life. They do not moralize, but give us enough space to gather insights into human life. Reading Paley satisfies the need for literature that is both political and entertaining.

Documentation

Primary literature:

Paley, Grace. "Dreamer in a Dead Language", in: Later the Same Day. Farrar Straus Giroux: New York, 1985, pp. 11-36.

Secondary literature:

Arcana, Judith. Grace Paley's Life Stories. A Literary Biography. University of Illinois Press: Urbana, 1993. Isaacs, Neil D. Grace Paley. A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne: Boston, 1990. Taylor, Jaqueline. Grace Paley. Illuminating dark lives. University of Texas Press: Austin, 1990.

Wolf, Christa. "Die Wahrheit unserer Zungen. Grace Paleys Geschichten.", in: Grace Paley: Die Schwebende Wahrheit. Erz ä hlungen und Gedichte. Reclam: Leipzig, 1991. 5-12.

Other collections of stories by Paley:

Paley, Grace: The Little Disturbances of Man. (LDM). Doubleday: New York, 1959.

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. (ECLM). Farrar Straus Giroux: New York, 1974. Appendix: List of characters:

Faith, single mother, divorced, middle-aged..

Philip Mazzano, her lover, interested in meeting Faith's father, likes his poetry Jack, Faith's oldest friend, never far but usually distant (12) Anita, Philip's ex-partner

Ricardo, Faith's ex-husband (mentioned)

Chuck Johnson , gatekeeper, afro-american

Anthony (Tonto), Faith's older son, sensible, reasonable

Richard, Faith's younger son, sweet/ sense of humour/naive: wants to repeat Mr. Darwin's stupid joke... Mr. Sidney Darwin, Faith's father

Mrs. Celia Darwin, Faith's mother russian grandfather, killed by the nazis (mentioned)

Mrs. Hegel-Shtein, annoying resident bunches of other residents, people who donated park benches...

1 Grace Paley."Dreamer in a Dead Language", in: Later the Same Day. (LSD). New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux 1985, pp. 11-36.
2 Published in American Review 26 (1977) under the title "Dreamers...".
3 Grace Paley. The Little Disturbances of Man. (LDM). Doubleday: New York, 1959. And Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. (ECLM). Farrar Straus Giroux: New York, 1974. (Her first two collections of stories.)
4 Jonathan Baumbach's review on ECLM in Partisan Review 42 (1975), quoted in Neil D. Isaacs. Grace Paley. A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne: Boston, 1990, p. 176.
5 Kathleen Hulley. "Interview with Grace Paley". Delta 14 (1982), p. 27, quoted in: Jaqueline Taylor. Grace Paley. Illuminating dark lives. University of Texas Press: Austin, 1990, p. 20.
6 cf. Baumbach quoted in Isaacs, p. 175.
7 The reader finds that out for a fact later when Mr. Darwin says to Faith: "I never realized he was such an interesting young man."(27)
8 Taylor examines Paley's strategies for unsettling the denials and distortions of dominant male consciousness and language. She provides a sociological category for situations like this: "Paley's language breaks the silence of patriachy's absolute denials in order to illuminate the dark lives of women". In this situation, Faith shatters her father's and her lovers' androcentric perspectives of her life. Paley provides a new, woman-centered construction of Faith's reality which includes deconstructing Faith's assumed sexually liberated live-style. See Taylor, p. 33.
9 see Isaacs, p. 71.
10 see Taylor, pp. 46-67.
11 see Taylor, p. 49.
12 cf. Taylor, p. 60.
13 Examples: "The old are modest. They tend not to outlive one another."(11) and "It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time."(24)
14 One example of this is how Mr. Darwin and Faith judge Faith's life in general and her relationship to Ricardo in particular. The reader is confronted with quite different versions of "truth".
15 cf. Isaacs, p. 70.