The Atomic Weight of Love - Elizabeth J Church (2016)

The Atomic Weight of Love is a fascinating novel, not so much because of its story or characters, although they are both rendered in a more than adequate fashion, but because it is a great example of how a novel does not necessarily need to be a work of literary genius to be affecting or even significant. Church’s own life story greatly influenced the content of this novel, having been born in Los Alamos to a father directly involved in the Manhattan Project and subsequent nuclear research after the end of WWII. However the novel is not Church’s life story; the main protagonist, Meridian Wallace, is an amalgam of many women she knew who lived in the Los Alamos community who put their careers and lives on hold to support their husbands work. Thematically the novel concerns itself with feminism with its portrayal of female subjugation in the face of patriarchal expectation and societal tradition. 

The Atomic Weight of Love, after a brief exposition of Meridian’s childhood, begins in earnest in 1941 at the University of Chicago where Meridian is studying ornithology. Meridian is a brilliant young student with a promising career ahead of her, however she meets and falls in love with Alden Whetstone, a physics professor twenty years her senior, whom she subsequently marries. Alden soon becomes involved with the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos. When the war ends Meridian is faced with the choice of being with her husband in Los Alamos or finishing her studies in Chicago. She agrees to postpone her studies for a year, effectively sealing her fate as just another unfulfilled housewife in Los Alamos. Such a premise could easily result in a novel rife with cliche, one dimensional characterizations and sentimentality, however Church has succeeded in producing a subtle representation of the emergence of the post war wave of feminism. Alden is predominantly portrayed not as an unrelenting misogynist (although he does have his moments), but as very much a product of his times, with all the gender role playing baggage that comes with it. Meridian, despite being an intelligent and capable women, becomes trapped and stupefied by her unstimulating house-wife existence.

Over a number of decades Meridian makes friends and tries to keep herself busy, but most significantly she ventures into the semi-arid wilderness around Los Alamos to study a group of crows. Her observations of crow behavior and her thoughts and realizations about her own life often intermingle, sometimes resulting in some perhaps too obvious analogies. It is during one of her forays into the wilderness that she meets a man called Clay, a man who is twenty years younger than her. Clay is also a Vietnam veteran and budding geologist. Clay is an obvious narrative device to offer Meridian a way out of her unfulfilled life and in some ways he is a cliched character, however as the novel progresses and their relationship becomes more complex Clay becomes the perfect means to reveal the dysfunctional cracks in the social mores that trapped Meridian in the first place.

The Atomic Weight of Love is set during great periods of upheaval and change, yet Church, on the whole, chooses not to allow the events and issues of the time period to dominate. World War Two, the moral questions surrounding atomic warfare, the Vietnam war, civil rights, the counterculture (although Clay is a hippy, as explored in some memorable scenes) and feminism itself, are mainly kept in the background or used as a means to give personal events or points of view context. Church has been criticized for only superficially exploring these issues, marking this apparent flaw as a wasted opportunity. There is certainly some validity to this criticism, however if these issues were in the narrative foreground then The Atomic Weight of Love would be a completely different novel and lose its prime thematic focus: as a very personal portrayal of the issues that led to the rise of post war feminism. Church should be lauded for being so subtle in her approach and not just writing another historical novel about America and the world in the mid twentieth century. Personally I very much appreciate that Church has written a narrative that resulted in me being interested in the life and welfare of its principle protagonist despite it being a novel I would not normally want to read if it were not for my book club duties.

During the meetings for the novel I asked the predominately (older) female attendees if they felt empathy for Meridian, and also if they considered the novel to be important in terms of reminding younger readers of why there was a need for feminism in the first place. Curiously many had little sympathy for Meridian, pointing out that she should have been stronger willed. No one considered the novel to be important, although some believed the novel to be worth reading and Meridian to be a fair representation of a woman living during that era and circumstance. I must say that I was surprised by some of the reactions to the novel, particularly from female members whom I thought would be much more sympathetic to Meridian’s plight. All three meetings were characterized by polarized opinions regarding the novel’s quality and subject matter, but particularly regarding Meridian’s life choices and attitudes. To my mind such polarization of opinion, healthy debate and the obvious qualities of the novel suggest that The Atomic Weight of Love can be considered a successful novel; but is it important in the context of the ongoing story of feminism? Perhaps it is at least an indicator that a feminist text does not need to written by Camille Paglia, Germaine Greer or Clementine Ford to be worthwhile; that popular literary fiction can be just as successful in conveying important themes and sparking debate as its more ‘serious’ literary counterparts.

The Female Eunuch - Germaine Greer (1970)

Germaine Greer has been synonymous with both feminism and controversy since she burst onto the cultural scene in 1970 with the publication of The Female Eunuch, a book that has not been out of print since. I must admit that I have had a rather dubious opinion of Greer in the past that was based on some of her more flippant comments (well, they seemed flippant to me, but look who’s talking...); in particular her comments about the first female Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, criticizing the size of her bottom and her choice in clothes. When I saw an American first edition of The Female Eunuch in hardback from 1971 at the Bill Campbell book shop in Fremantle (a few years ago now) I thought that it was about time I gave Greer the benefit of the doubt.

The Female Eunuch is organised into five sections: Body, Soul, Love, Hate and Revolution. After the introduction, in which Greer refers to the first wave of feminism; the suffragettes and how they relate to the then second wave of feminism, Greer gets straight into what it physically means to be a woman. Genetically the female form is expressed by the XX chromosomes and the male by an XY combination. Greer points out that the Y chromosome’s only function is to block the second X, a fact I already knew but in this context the thought sprung to mind that men are merely half a woman! I’m sure that Greer did not intend such a reaction (or did she?), but it was effective non-the-less. Throughout this section’s chapters: Gender, Bones, Curves, Hair, Sex and The Wicked Womb, Greer discusses just what it is to be a woman and how both female and male perceptions skew cultural attitudes towards the female form. In The Wicked Womb chapter Greer infamously notes that “If you think that you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your menstrual blood-if it makes you sick, you’ve got a long way to go baby.” As flippant as this may seem Greer’s point is that due to cultural repression women themselves had (have?, unlikely now...) precious little idea of the functions of their own female form. Whether this was true or not is open to conjecture, however perhaps just how much things have changed was hinted at when I was reading through the reader reviews for this book on Goodreads and one particular female reviewer took severe umbrage to the notion that “she had a long way to go” because she hadn’t tasted her own menstrual blood. Curiously most of the favourable reviews on this website were written by men, perhaps reflecting just how loaded the notion of Feminism is these days for women. Here in Australia much has been made about whether federal female politicians identify themselves as Feminist or not, with some in the ruling Liberal Party choosing not to, such as foreign minister Julie Bishop.

Far from being a spiteful diatribe against men, The Female Eunuch is a well written and mostly astute examination of just how patriarchal society over the course of history has psychologically molded women (and men, for that matter) into powerless role playing actors that serve only to further entrench the status-quo. Across the Soul and Love sections Greer examines how women are psychologically molded by childhood, their adult relationships and the weight of gender expectation. Such role playing continues in their work life, often resulting in dysfunction and bitterness. Although Greer’s arguments are persuasive, she does slip into some spurious speculative anthropology at times. In the Hate section Greer strongly suggests that women just don’t realize how much men hate them and that, significantly, men feel disgusted after sex. Greer cites a discussion with one man “...who...assumed that all men felt disgusted by sex afterwards.” She goes on to say that “It is too easy to decide that this is a unique case of a special kind of fastidiousness. It has grown out of the felt loss of human dignity which is the product of boredom and restriction.”  It seems that in 1970 Greer found it all too easy to generalize based on one man’s inhibitions and disgust. Surely there were studies that Greer could have drawn from, such as Alfred Kinsey’s from the 1950’s.

Flaws aside The Female Eunuch is, even now, powerful reading. I’m not surprised the book made such an impact at the time of publication. Greer’s writing is bold and assured, although now slightly dated by an occasional anachronistic turn of phrase. The final two sections, Hate and Revolution, pack the most punch. Greer examines the misery that women are put through by the dominant patriarchal capitalist society, but also, equally significantly, what women put themselves through. The chapters, Abuse, Misery and Resentment reveal, even after nearly five decades, all too familiar tribulations for women facing the demands of married life, work and the pressures of life under the yoke of capitalism. In Revolution Greer advises that the answer does not lie in equality if that means becoming like men, because, she observes, men are not free themselves. This is a key point and one that both men and women should be taking very seriously.  Greer advises women against marriage (good advice I say...) to free themselves of the burden of the nuclear family that merely serves to reinforce gender role-playing. Women should be, instead, self determined, rather than passively hoping for change via the establishment; they should attempt to create and experiment with new ways of relating to men and raising children.

Significantly Greer warns women against the manipulations of capitalism, something that is wholly prescient considering the levels of marketing modern women are exposed to and the damaging effect it has on their well-being. I was particularly taken by the concluding pages of the Revolution section in which she notes: “We have but one life to live, and the first object is to find a way of salvaging that life from the disabilities already inflicted on it in the service of our civilization.” Although The Female Eunuch was published some forty six years ago and Western civilization has altered enormously, much of what Greer has to say is still important. Just what Feminism means to the average modern woman seems to be, as ever, in flux, so no doubt The Female Eunuch will get plenty of attention when its fiftieth anniversary comes around in 2020.