Pam Houston: Redefining the Adventure Story
This convention is the one Houston most often twists to gain the greatest effect in her stories. Each of Houston’s stories that I will work with in this paper is told in the first person by a female narrator. Houston endows her female protagonists with the abilities to participate in the activities Green designates as male-specific. The three adventure stories I have chosen for this paper show differing degrees of departure from the traditional roles of women in the adventure tale. “Selway” (1992), most closely resembles a traditional adventure narrative. Houston liberates her female protagonist even further in “The Moon is a Woman’s First Husband, ” and further yet in “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals” (1998). Although Houston rearranges many of the male-female relationships of traditional adventure literature, she adheres to enough of the skeletal criteria to firmly plant her work in the adventure genre.
Depending on the source, the details of the important components of adventure literature vary slightly. This variance occurs because each adventure tale varies in degrees of adherence to these standards. To create a starting point, I have compiled several different definitions of adventure and its elements, which broadly cover many of the key conventions. In addition to a male protagonist, common to almost all traditional adventure stories is a physically or mentally challenging, possibly even life-threatening situation or series of these situations: “Conceptually I would define the adventure experience as a series of events, partly but not wholly accidental, in places far from home-most often far from civilization-which constitute a challenge to the person they happen to” (Green, Great American 1). Often the protagonist purposefully seeks adventure to prove himself or conquer others, yet at other times the protagonist stumbles unwittingly into danger. The adventurer is forced to show certain characteristics that are brought to the surface by the tests he forced to face. These characteristics include but are not limited to courage, strength, leadership, and persistence (Green 1). By navigating through the danger that tests these characteristics, the protagonist is able to reach a state of realization about himself and/or his place among men or the universe: “As Bakhtin explains, the hero tests and confirms himself in his remarkable capacities and/or is transformed by the experience” (Bakhtin qtd. in Jespersen 4). The hero referred to here is synonymous with the protagonist or adventurer. Often the transformation or realization occurs at the end of the story, but it can also occur after each episode of danger experienced within one story.
Men and women are assigned different roles within the narrative according to the traditional adventure conventions. Whether the male adventurer is seeking adventure to prove himself, to conquer lands or people, or happens upon it unexpectedly, many of his motivations and reactions are cemented in his relationship to the female. The male protagonist of a conventional adventure tale stands for independence, freedom, and individuality by virtue of his being able to quit his home, his responsibilities, and at times his family in order to pursue his desires: “It is true, of course, that, in order to represent some kind of believable flight into the wilderness, one must select a protagonist with a certain believable mobility, and mobility until recently has been a male prerogative in our society” (Baym 12). In addition, many times the adventurer’s motivation to seek excitement lies in the need to escape the domestic realm that traditionally belongs to the female. It is ironic that the domesticity of society that the male tries to flee is as connected to female qualities as the landscape he escapes to: “Landscape is deeply imbued with female qualities, as society is-but where society is menacing and destructive, landscape is complacent and supportive” (14). As Baym points out, no matter how desperately the male adventurer tries to reject the femininity of society, he still desires some of the female qualities: “To do it [reject society] he must project onto the woman those attractions that he feels and cast her in the melodramatic role of temptress, antagonist, obstacle” (12). Often nature or the landscape plays these roles by enticing the adventurer to exploration or by creating barriers such as mountains, oceans, and storms to keep the adventurer from his goal.
Finally, addressing the traditional purposes for the adventure narrative allows further understanding of the relationships between men, women, the land, and society. Aside from the purely aesthetic need for change and excitement, there must be a reason the male protagonists find their homes and societies so intolerable. The protagonist who chooses to leave society often does so for political reasons that are purposefully conveyed to the reader:To enjoy adventures was (and is) to prepare oneself in imagination to go out to a frontier, whether it was overseas or in the western part of this continent, and to advance that frontier-against native populations or natural barriers-to extend the domain of civilization. (And ‘civilization’ was usually a pseudonym for one’s own country.) (Green, Great American 2)
In other words, most traditional adventure is largely imperialistic, especially British and early American, in order to encourage patriotism and recruit volunteers for the expansion of the country. Green claims that this propaganda closely tied the definition of manliness to patriotism and therefore imperialism (2). The adventure narratives reinforce and define what is masculine, while enticing the men to foreign lands to prove their masculinity. It follows that to maintain society and patriotism at home, a portion of the society must be convinced to stay there. Tradition and exclusion from the adventure tale automatically designated women for this role in society. Anne LaBastille reminds us, “It is important to remember that throughout history cultural conditioning and opinion had strongly centered women in the home. Consequently, they generally possessed none of the necessary skills to survive alone in the wilderness” (15). This “cultural conditioning,” though it may not apply to many women today, is reflected in the dominant literature of the British Empire. It is not until the settling of the western American frontier that more women in literature are able to fend for themselves and seek adventure. In her historical research on women and the American wilderness, LaBastille explains, “In the long run, women became near equals to men on the frontierâÂ?¦ The mores of the time were restructured and reshaped, leading to a larger, freer life for women in the American wilderness” (21). As literature tends to reflect real-life situations, especially in the adventure genre, the more liberated women are in actuality; the more liberated the women become in adventure stories. In this sense, especially in the three stories examined in this paper, Houston is able to expand and continue a trend toward liberating females in American adventure literature.
Political motivation is also visible in another form in traditional adventure: that of social change. Since most adventure settings are exotic, foreign, or natural, the action itself must necessarily occur outside of everyday life. In The Adventurous Male Green describes adventure as “a series of events that outrage civilized or domestic morality and that challenge those to whom those events happen to make use of powers that civil life forbids to the ordinary citizen” (4). Some examples of events from conventional adventure narratives include certain forms of violence, seduction by native females, or a rejection of religion. By retreating into nature or unexplored land, the male is able to create his own ideals, to engage in “forbidden activities”: “Georges Bataille says we must think of cities and citizenship as based on the purposes and values of work, which means the denial of all activities hostile to work, such as both the ecstasies of eroticism and those of violence (i.e., adventure)” (Green 17). Therefore, traditionally the author is able to send the male protagonist on an adventure, which is socially and politically acceptable for the expansion of society, and at the same time allows the adventurer to avoid the doldrums of everyday occupations and their entrapments. The ideal civilization created in the adventure story, if successful, influences the reader in the same way the imperialistic propaganda entices the reader to crave an escape from society. In order to give the adventurer further reason and justification to leave his home in search of adventure, a negative association is placed on domestic society: “In the stories the encroaching, constricting, destroying society is represented with particular urgency in the figure of one or more women” (12). The male adventurer is encouraged to expand civilization for his country with the added belief that he will be able to create a new, ideal society in an exotic land. The political or imperialist motivation further excludes the presence of strong intelligent women from adventure literature.
These are the basic elements of the traditional adventure that are helpful in creating a platform to begin analyzing Houston’s stories. I will examine each of the three stories individually in order to show the specific story’s relationship to the traditional adventure conventions. Of the three stories, “Selway” is the most easily recognizable as an adventure narrative. The unnamed female protagonist/narrator is companion to her male partner, Jack, on an extremely dangerous rafting trip prompted by him. Throughout the trip, both the narrator and Jack are forced to make critical decisions in order to avert death at the hands of a swelling river. The first decision comes early in the story when the two must decide whether or not to heed the warnings of the daunting park ranger, Ramona: ” ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘I think this is a chance of a lifetime,’ I saidâÂ?¦ I wanted to feel the turbulence underneath me. I wanted to run a rapid that could flip a boat. I hadn’t taken anything like a risk in months. I wanted to think about dying” (24). Already, on the second page of the story, Houston departs from the traditional adventure in two ways. First, the female is allowed to give advice and make a decision in order to guide the male. Jack shows his concern for and respect of the female by letting her make the choice: “As much as I knew Jack wanted to go, he wouldn’t have pushed me if I’d said I was scared” (24). Second, the female is the actual risk-taker in this situation. According to the narrator, Jack is willing to abandon the trip, but she is determined to continue even though she is admittedly frightened. In addition, Jack has experience with highwater rafting, while the narrator does not. She admits that she is naÃ?¯ve to the dangers of a highwater river: “After making slow love between rapids on the wide desert rivers, I couldn’t imagine what all the fuss was about” (22). Still, the narrator accepts the challenge, not backing away from the power of the river. The narrator acknowledges that Jack views the feminine as secure and reasonable: “He relied on me to speak with the voice of reason, to be life-protecting because I’m a woman and that’s how he thinks women are” (24). Then she rejects this idea as reality: “I’ve never been protective enough of anything, least of all myself” (24). It is ironic, therefore, that because she rejects the idea of herself as a protector that she accepts the traditional concept of the male as her guardian. By denying the traditional domestic role of the nurturer, the narrator places herself under the leadership of her male companion so someone will look out for her well-being. She relies on Jack to gives her direction on the river as he finds the takeouts and tells her what to do when the boat flips: ” ‘I lost the boat,’ he yelled. ‘Walk downstream till you see it.’ I was happy for instructions and I set off down the scouting trail” (38). Her jobs on the raft as bailer and map-reader, although important, are secondary to his job of physically guiding the raft. The confusion between who is the protector and who needs protection shows the narrator’s struggle to understand this concept herself: “I realized then that more than any other reason for being on that trip, I was there because I thought I could take care of him, and maybe there’s something women want to protect after all” (40). Still, she is as unable to protect him from danger as he is to protect her from it. Neither person plays the protector and/or guardian in the traditional sense, because they are only able to help themselves. The male especially is of no help to the female in a life-threatening situation. She must fight to save herself without his physical assistance: “I’d lost one loafer in the river, so I wedged myself between the granite walls and used my fingers, mostly, to climb. I’ve always been a little afraid of heights, so I didn’t look down. I thought it would be stupid to live through the boating accident and smash my skull free-climbing on granite” (37). Unlike the traditional females of adventure stories, Houston’s narrator exhibits individual mental and physical strength to avert death on her own.
Houston further complicates the traditional roles of male and female by portraying the male as the sex object. Although he fulfills a nearly traditional role as guardian for the first part of the river trip, he is reduced to a mere mass of muscle by the narrator: “It was hard for me to take my eyes off Jack, the way his muscles strained with every stroke, first his upper arms, then his upper thighs” (25). In The Adventurous Male Green claims, “The tomboy-the traditional term for an adventurous girl-is usually held to spice her femininity with a flavor of the masculine, while the corresponding figure of the sissy, the boy who is not adventurous, loses his masculinity without gaining any feminine virtue to compensate” (226). Houston’s narrator fits the depiction of a tomboy, but the male does not become less masculine because of her tomboy qualities. The male loses none of his masculinity by allowing the female to make some decisions and by being viewed as a sex object-by Green’s definition he is still adventurous. In fact, as seen above, Jack actually becomes more masculine in the narrator’s eyes due to Houston’s reversal of these roles. At different points in the story, one character may show more masculine or feminine traits than the other may. What seems to happen throughout the story with regard to masculinity and femininity is that Houston blurs the lines between the two concepts.
Houston also manipulates the concept of nature as a seductress in “Selway.” She considers nature as male instead of female: “When a river is at high water it’s not just deeper and faster and colder than usual. It’s got a different look and feel from the rest of the year. It’s dark and impatient and turbulent, like a volcano or a teenage boy” (23). This river is anything but comforting and far from enticing. It takes a weighty decision for the couple to subject themselves to its turbulent water that “was snow about fifteen minutes ago” (23). The narrator associates Jack with the river by claiming he has “respect” for the river and describing him as “untamable” just like the high water. Yet the water embodies so much masculinity that it seems as if Jack is threatened by it at one point: “I wanted to tell him how the water made me feel, how horny and crazy and happy I felt riding on top of water that couldn’t hold itself in, but he was scared, for the first time since I’d known him” (27).
The river is threatening to Jack because it proves to be more powerful than he is, while at the same time arousing to his partner. Still, the river, like Jack, does not seduce the narrator, but inspires the sexual feelings she directs toward him: “[The river] strains against its banks and it churns around and under itself. Looking at its fullness made me want to grab Jack and throw him down on the boat ramp and make love right next to where the river roared by” (23). The narrator’s constant references to sex contrasts the ever-present threat of death as symbolized in this quote by the roaring river. Though a masculine nature conflicts with traditional adventure conventions, Houston’s use of the sex acts inspired by it adheres to tradition. Green quotes Georges Bataille’s statement that sex and death “are simply the culminating points of the holiday nature celebrates, with the inexhaustible multitude of human beings” (Adventurous Male 25). The narrator is able to express the struggle between life and death through the concept of sex: “We made love like crazy people, the way you do when you think it may be the last time ever” (27). There is truth in this statement because each day on the river brings the possibility of death. Basically, as shown by Bataille and illustrated by Houston, sex and death embody the essence of life at its most intense moments, and therefore the ideals of adventure.
“Selway” conforms to other traditional adventure conventions as well. First, Jack is a male seeking independence, especially from domesticity. The narrator claims that Jack’s old girlfriends “wanted him to quit running rivers, to get a job that wasn’t seasonal, to raise a family like any man his age” (23). Whether or not he brings his girlfriend along on the trip, he is motivated to run the river at least partially in rejection of what society deems appropriate for a “man his age.” Jack is content to live on the fringes of this entrapping society. The narrator at times also shows qualities of the traditional feminine role in adventure. Twice she commits blunders that reinforce traditional male-female roles. First, she screams after stepping on an elk carcass, a stereotypical female response which brings the men running to her rescue: ” ‘It startled me is all,’ I said. ‘Jesus,’ Jack said. ‘Stay with us, all right?'” (34). Then she throws the bail bucket overboard, making her unable to fulfill one of her duties on the raft. Although she later proves her strength and is able to redeem herself, this act makes her seem incompetent: “I was throwing water so fast I lost my balance and that’s when I heard Jack say, ‘Bail faster!’ and that’s when I threw the bail bucket into the river and watched, unbelieving, as it went under, and I saw Jack see it too” (35). The narrator also conforms to traditional conventions when describing her past boyfriends. She states, “I tamed them and made them as dull as fence posts and left each one for someone wilder than the last” (26). In this example, she seems to be the adventurer’s nightmare, purposely restricting his freedom to the point where he gives it up. However, to her the men themselves are the adventure, and her goal is to conquer them. Traditionally, the feminine aspects of society embody the forces that threaten to suffocate and deter the men from their goals. In “Selway,” Houston is able to combine the female’s traditional goal of romance with an untraditional goal for adventure.
The narrator realizes that Jack she cannot conquer Jack, and she begins to accept him for what he is: “I knew there’d always be places he’d go that I couldn’t, and that I’d have to let him go” (40). Ironically, at the end of the story, Jack admits that “he thought fifteen years of highwater was probably enough, and that he’d take to desert rivers from now on” (41). The realizations of each character bring them closer to each other and are typical of traditional adventure. After facing a near-death situation, each person is able to reevaluate his or her place in the relationship, as well as in his or her own life. The narrator claims that “a woman can’t know in what way a man satisfies himself, what question he answers for himself, when he looks right at death” (34). Yet, she herself answers questions for herself after narrowly escaping death when the boat flips. She comes to terms with why she came on the trip and that she has spent years “saying love and freedom are mutually exclusive and living [her] life as though they were exactly the same thing” (41). The narrator reaches the understanding that she must participate in adventure for herself “to make it worth anything” (33).
This realization leads to a final aspect of “Selway” that conforms to the adventure conventions-the promotion of social change. In The Great American Adventure Green states, Significant literary adventures consist of three elements, the first two of which are frontier anecdote (or seafaring anecdote or shipwreck anecdote) and the long tradition of literary romanceâÂ?¦ This fusion becomes significant, and can be taken seriously, when a third element is added: when the adventure makes the reader/writer contemplate his/her own status anthropologically. (5)
In other words, Green states that literary adventure causes the reader to analyze his or her place or purpose in relation to humanity. Though it is subtle, Houston encourages her readers, especially those who are female, to challenge themselves for themselves. The narrator of “Selway” places herself in a dangerous situation initially for a place in Jack’s life, and then realizes she must make a place in her life for herself. “Selway” conforms to a shipwreck story with a touch of romance. Houston is able to draw the reader into the story through realistic characters facing problems that everyone can relate to on some level-whether the problems deal with relationships or the danger of the adventure. The fact that it is a female protagonist who comes to terms with a change she must make in her way of thinking, removes this story from the bounds of traditional adventure.
Houston continues to expand the concept of female strength in “The Moon Is a Woman’s First Husband.” Contrary to traditional standards, Lucy, the female narrator and protagonist holds as much or more responsibility for the navigation of the Phaedrus as the men do. Lucy is “the unofficial helmsman on all trips” for two reasons (129). First, she “could hold a tighter course than anybody Henry knew” (129). Second, she gets seasick if she is not at the helm. Although her tendency toward illness might be considered a weakness, she does not let it interfere with her job: “I took advantage of the chaos the third wave brought to throw up fast and silent into a cup” (140). It is Lucy who guides the boat safely to harbor: “Carter stayed in the bow and yelled out his guesses at the distance from each set of waves but I could hear them perfectly even from where I stood, and Henry said later I ran the line between them as well as a computer could have done” (145). One of the reasons Lucy is trusted with the job of helmsman, despite the presence of two capable men is because she is much more secure and confident in life than they are: “Henry was about to get married for the fourth time to a girl half his age named Candy, who said no ways and youse guys and worked at a Piercing Pagoda in the middle of a shopping mallâÂ?¦ I didn’t know why Carter wanted to marry the girl who scowled” (126). When it comes to love in her own life, Lucy claims, “Some daysâÂ?¦ I think I’d go home with anybody who whistled,” while ‘other days I’m just not willing to settle” (131). Although Lucy’s standards toward love seem uncertain, she is not trapping herself in unhealthy relationships like the men.
Another reason Lucy appears more secure than the men in the story is that she does not reveal as much about her own personal life as she reveals of the men’s. Describing a traditional adventurer, Paul Zweig states, “Because the adventurer is fully alive only when he acts, he is a man without a past. Each episode is for him a fresh identity, a beginning of sorts” (82). In keeping with traditional adventure, in this story Lucy seems to be whole without a past. Her sailing history and some background about her relationships with Henry and Carter are all that she provides for the reader. Therefore, the reader can believe her when she claims, “The moonâÂ?¦ is a woman’s first husband” (158). Though she has close personal relationships with men, as evidenced by Carter and Henry, she is ultimately “unwilling to settle” for these earthly, fallible creatures. She gains independence from men in general by claiming the moon and stars as the original recipients of her affection.
Because she is so interested in the stars and moon, Lucy becomes closely tied to the landscape. Lucy binds herself to the moon by claiming it as her husband. In this sense, Lucy seems to fit the traditional adventure convention as a woman who is connected to the landscape. However, it is important to recognize that though the female is connected to the landscape in this instance, the landscape of the night sky is not female. Like in “Selway,” certain aspects of the landscape in “The Moon Is a Woman’s First Husband” take on masculine qualities. Nina Baym suggests that female authors “might adjust the heroic myth to her own psyche by making nature out to be male” (15). Houston only considers the moon and specific stars constellations as masculine. Lucy is the only one on the boat who knows the constellations and their stories intimately: ” ‘Then Artemis, the virgin goddess of hunting, fell in love with [Orion] and sicked Scorpio on him in a jealous fit,’ I said, ‘and that was the end for Orion.’ ‘I thought a pack of love-crazed women tore him limb from limb,’ Henry said. ‘That was Orpheus,’ I said” (156). Lucy’s fascination with the night sky gives her further independence from the men on the ship, as well as authority over them in the sense that she possesses more knowledge than the men do.
Nature in the earthly sense takes on some traditional roles as well. The forces that create the storm at the beginning of the story are indifferent and dangerous. The storm stands in the way of the adventurers’ goal: reaching Bimini harbor. However, Lucy does not make a gender distinction while describing the storm: “A gust came whipping across the beam of the boat, making the rigging sing sharp and loud and straining the furling lines hard against the winches. The prevailing winds across the Gulf Stream were easterly, and anytime they clocked to the south it meant a front was coming through” (134). Lucy does refer to the thunder as “GordonâÂ?¦ clearing his throat,” but this is more in reference to a recent hurricane, than to give the storm a specific gender (134). The sailors are pitted against nature in the sense that they must work together to survive against the storm. They are victorious by arriving safely at the harbor, but they have not necessarily “conquered” the storm or nature, they have merely survived it. Another instance where the characters must fight nature for survival occurs when Lucy and Carter become trapped in the rip current. Again, nature is indifferent and life threatening: “Slowly it dawned on me that hard as I was swimming, I wasn’t getting any closer to the beach. The ocean would let me get just inside the breaker zone, but wouldn’t give me anything more” (150). Though Lucy personifies the ocean here, she does not assign it a gender.
The indistinguishable gender of nature and the storm mirrors the characters’ lack of specific gender in the story. Although Lucy holds responsibility on the ship, she is not necessarily the independent hero of the trip. Traditionally, the hero shows more strength and intelligence than the other participants in the adventure do. Of course, this hero is traditionally male, and as Jespersen points out, “Within the logic of the adventure narrative white women must be relegated to the margins of the tale lest their essential ‘femininity’ arrest the very possibility of adventure and the establishment of male identity” (4). Houston creates a situation where each individual, including and especially the female, is important in the survival of the group: Carter lashed himself to the bowsprit, looking and listening in the dark for waves, his yellow rain gear glowing up there like some misshapen moon. I kept one hand on the wheel and one hand on the throttle, ready to throw it into reverse the second Carter yelled. Henry fiddled with the GPS, kept his flashlight trained on the navigational chart, which was soaked through and in pieces, looked up every once in a while to try and read the island lights. (143) In this quote and throughout the story, it is difficult to determine the gender of the narrator and her companions.
Lucy’s “essential femininity” does not keep her from participating in the adventure equally with the men. Her femininity surfaces in the form of Henry’s concern for her after she and Carter get caught in the rip current: “‘The part of the story I don’t get,’ Henry saidâÂ?¦ ‘is why if it was so hard for Carter to get himself in he didn’t figure you’d be in trouble too'” (152). Paul Zweig contends that in romance and adventure, the ” ‘defenseless’ women invariably require the bravery, daring, and loyalty of men capable of risking their lives” (62). Carter reaches the shore before Lucy, but he is so exhausted that he is unable to help her. Henry conforms to the traditional adventure convention by assuming that Lucy needed Carter’s help. Yet even Lucy does not expect Carter to come swimming out to save her: “Carter should run for help and quick” (151). As in “Selway,” the female protagonist is forced to save herself, even though there is a male present: “I looked back behind me and saw a big wave coming in, the biggest of the day maybe, a wave I would never in my right mind try to ride, and decided in a split second that my only hope was to sacrifice myselfâÂ?¦. It tumbled me over and over until I smashed headfirst into the gloriously solid sand” (151).
Houston further blurs the traditional adventure story’s concepts of masculinity and femininity by giving the males some feminine qualities. Henry does all of the cooking on the ship: “Henry was intent on the preparation of one of his specialties-pork loin a la Jack Daniel’s” (146). Carter’s inability to help Lucy in the rip current and his constant musing about love do not exactly qualify him as manly in the traditional sense of adventure. The flexible genders of the characters help to create a group of personalities who are able to cooperate and bond despite their differences in sex. This concept defies the traditional adventure conventions of what is masculine and feminine, as well as the emergence of a single hero.
Houston keeps with traditional adventure in several other aspects of the story. The purpose of the trip is to travel to a foreign land. Carter, Henry, and Lucy leave the United States and travel to Bimini. Carter and Henry are trying to escape domesticity or their women at home: ” ‘I told Sarah I’d use this trip to get my head sorted out,’ Carter said” (153). Carter further defies the concepts of domesticity and society even while they are in Bimini, by walking around the boat in the nude: “‘Carter,’ Henry said, ‘I don’t want you to think me prudish, but we’re in what passes for a big city in the Bahamas, and the Bahamians take a rather dim view of the white people coming in here and breaking their laws'” (146). Henry is able to create his ideal society on the boat. In addition to the fact that he prioritizes the presence of alcoholic beverages on board over essentials such as a life raft, he is able to create his own rules: “There was only one rule on board Phaedrus that I knew of: the videocassette tapes could not be stored in their proper boxes. I’d seen Henry kick a man off the boat in Georgetown once, a Frenchman who couldn’t stand the disarray” (128). Even Lucy is attempting to escape domesticity on some level by attaching herself to the moon-another distant, foreign location. The fact that the moon is essentially unattainable to her shows her inability to accept a domestic lifestyle. In her rejection of domesticity, Lucy at once conforms to and defies this adventure convention because traditionally as a woman she should embrace the domestic.
Another adventure convention that Houston adheres to in this story is that the adventure leads at least one participant to a clearer understanding of himself and his goals. The character transformation that occurs after the experience of the adventure is only untraditional in the sense that Carter undergoes the greatest change, not the protagonist, Lucy. Carter is able to leave the boat with a plan for his future: ” ‘I’m gonna call Sarah,’ Carter said, ‘as soon as we tie up to the dock and say Groundhog Day. Marry Me. Aloha’ ” (158). Through his experiences with his shipmates, nearly dying in the rip current, and the time spent away from home, Carter is able to make the decision that he has struggled with in the past. It is a transformation for Carter to be able to say that he wants to marry Sarah. Earlier in the story, he is uncertain: “I’ve been with Sarah off and on for twelve years. I love herâÂ?¦ just not in all the right ways” (147). He completes his goal of getting his “head sorted out” on the trip (153). Lucy also undergoes a slight transformation in the sense that through her stories she grows closer to the constellations throughout the adventure until she is able to declare her affectionate connection to the moon. By allowing Carter’s transformation to be more dramatic than Lucy’s, Houston is able to further show a sharing of the hero role, just as all three shipmates are equal when it comes to navigating the ship and exerting physical strength. Through these methods, Houston successfully crosses the boundaries of masculinity and femininity established by traditional adventure that she was unable to fully overcome in “Selway.” In “The Moon Is a Woman’s First Husband,” she is able to elevate the female to a status equal to the males in the adventure setting.
In contrast to Lucy in “The Moon Is a Woman’s First Husband,” Houston allows her protagonist/narrator in “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals” to be the obvious and only heroine. Though she remains unnamed in the story, this protagonist is strongest female out of the three stories examined in this paper. Houston skillfully twists the adventure conventions in “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals” so that in some aspects it is farther removed from the traditional adventure narrative than the previous two stories. Still, other elements of this story adhere strongly to the traditional conventions. Once again, the most obvious adventure convention that Houston manipulates is that a male must be the hero or protagonist. Like in “The Moon Is a Woman’s First Husband,” Houston blurs the restrictions that traditional adventure places on what qualities are considered masculine or feminine by having the female protagonist play both roles.
Because the female protagonist of “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals” is also the narrator, the reader is able to see her motives and thought processes clearly throughout the story: “I was always quick, in those days, to make the distinction between a hunter and a hunting guide, for though I was individually responsible for the deaths of a total of five animals, I have never killed an animal myself, and never intend to” (43). The first person, female point of view allows the reader to understand and identify with the protagonist more easily-especially because her opinions are not necessarily universally accepted. The narrator acknowledges this fact by stating, “I understand every ethical argument there is about hunting including the one that says it is the hunters who will ultimately save the animals because it is the NRA who has the money and the power to protect what is left of America’s wilderness” (46). In her dissertation, Jespersen points out that traditional adventure stories “champion the mastery over land and people,” however, women’s adventure stories “often advocate something quite different: the development of ways to proceed ethically in cultural encounters and environmental meetings” (14). In “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals,” Houston illustrates the narrator’s desire to act ethically toward the wilderness and its inhabitants. Even when she is guiding, the narrator emphasizes her responsibility to the animals as well as to the hunters: “My other job, though understated, was to protect the sheep from the hunters, to guarantee that the hunter shot only the oldest ram in the herd, that he only shot one animal, and that he only fired when he was close enough to make a killing shot” (44). The narrator acts as a liaison between the hunters and the wilderness. The narrator’s unwillingness to actually shoot and kill the animal places her in a somewhat traditional female role because she excludes herself from the traditionally masculine activity of actually killing the animal. In The Adventurous Male Green states, “A fundamentally adventurous activity that leads to bloodshed and meat-eating, hunting is linked to war, another activity that is morally reproved but imaginatively endorsed by civilized culture” (18). The narrator associates the concept of war with her male clients: “The majority of my clients started out thinking that hunting is like war. The were impatient like a general, impatient like a sergeant who thinks he should be the general, impatient for the sound of his own gun and impatient for the opposition to make a mistake” (47). The narrator uses the past tense in this statement because she believes that one of her jobs as a guide is to show the hunters that “if hunting can be like war it can also be like opera, or fine wine” (47). In contrast to the men, the narrator associates herself with the landscape and nature, as would be expected in a traditional adventure narrative. She explains that this connection inherently allows females to possess the qualities such as patience and imagination that allow her to track and understand the movements of the animals. She even states that this “is why, in so many ancient and contemporary societies, women have been the superior hunters” (47). The narrator also says that Jacques Lacan “believed that that men desire the object of their desire, while women desire the condition of desiring” (46). Therefore, narrator’s feminine qualities allow her to excel at tracking the animals, but at the same time prevent her from aspiring to kill it. The twist that Houston puts on the traditional adventure conventions in relation to hunting is that the story focuses on the female guide, not the males doing the killing. The plot of this story is motivated by the hunt, but does not actually involve any type of “bloodshed and meat-eating.”
Houston allows her narrator to denounce killing the animals and still participate in an adventure by showing the simplicity and, in this case, stupidity of the men who are actually supposed to do the killing on the hunt. The first mention of her clients on this particular trip shows their ineptness: “The hunters-I forget their names now, but let’s just call them Larry and Moe-were nervous” (49). The narrator gives the men generic, humorous names and therefore humbles them from the beginning. By describing the men as nervous, she robs them of the confidence that is traditionally associated with men in an adventure. Houston illustrates here that the men are not as significant as the protagonist, which strips distinction and importance from the act of killing the animals. In The Adventurous Male Green points out, “Whenever a hero achieves freedom in an adventure, someone else loses it, sooner or later” (8). The narrator has the freedom to make decisions for the men because of her status as their guide. Therefore, the men lose the freedom to make their own decisions, and consequently lose power in relation to the narrator. Larry and Moe place “a rock-quartz, I believe-weighing six or seven pounds” in the narrator’s backpack in an attempt to assert themselves and regain some of their power and freedom to make decisions (49).
By rearranging the traditionally masculine roles of protector and decision-maker, Houston is able to create a heroine who fills masculine and feminine roles simultaneously. The narrator admits that part of her duty to the men on the hunt is to “keep him fed and watered, to listen to his stories” like the domestic woman of traditional adventure (44). At the same time, she also plays the traditional role of a male caring for a weaker female, though in this case it is a female protecting a weaker male: “It was my job to keep him from falling into a crevasse or getting eaten by a grizzly bear, to carry his gun when he got too tired” (44). By combining the traditional masculine and feminine roles in her narrator, Houston is able to illustrate that women can be just as strong as men can be weak, and therefore breaks down the traditional stereotypes of what are appropriate qualities for the male and female in adventure narratives.
When the narrator finds herself in trouble after she is stung by hornets, blame is not placed on her for being a weak “defenseless” female in need of help from a brave man. The men are the cause of her trouble, and they are anything but brave. In fact, they take no action to help save the narrator until she tells them to: “I ordered Larry to carry me on his back over to the glacier, ordered Moe to scout ahead and find a place where the ice had melted and the water had pooled” (49). The narrator is responsible for saving herself as well as saving the men. When they move down the mountain again later in the afternoon, the narrator is still telling the men what to do in order to ensure everyone’s survival: “I spoke with authority and the boys believed meâÂ?¦ ‘You guys sing real loud now,’ I told them. ‘Let’s give the bear the opportunity to do the right thing'” (50). The narrator has more than just mental presence in this emergency situation. When her necklace catches on a tree branch, she must rely on physical strength to save herself: “I lifted my good arm up to the branch above me and did something I never could do in gym class, a one-handed-chin-up, and repositioned my feet and unhooked my necklace from the alder branch” (51). At this point in the story, the men already far ahead of the narrator and therefore unable to help her. As in “Selway” and “The Moon Is a Woman’s First Husband,” the protagonist must have the strength and courage save herself.
Though Houston definitely keeps the men on the hunt from gaining power over the narrator, she does not necessarily belittle or exclude them. The narrator begins to call Larry and Moe boys and she even goes so far as to say that they “were scared into silence by the noises behind them” (51). However, this story does not attempt to take power away from all men. The narrator does not categorize all men as irresponsible: “Most of the guides I knew were far better at [tracking] than I” (47). These guides are the ones who have taught the narrator the fundamentals of guiding, and she respects them. Just as in her earlier stories, Houston is depicting normal, everyday men and women who get themselves into dangerous situations. The men on this hunt are from Mississippi, have not done much high altitude hunting, and require a guide for survival. This concept is much different from the traditional adventure, which taught males to “take initiatives, to run risks, to give orders, to fight, to defeat, and dominate” (Green, Great American 1). Houston does not merely insert the female into these roles. The narrator of “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals” does not fight, defeat, or dominate, she protects. In the same sense the males in this story are not “being ignored by the genre” as women are in traditional adventure (2). Houston therefore complicates the concepts of the adventure story’s audience and its message. She writes to women as well as men, and the realistic reactions of the characters are appealing to contemporary readers. As in traditional adventure, the protagonist grows from her near-death experience. The narrator discovers the reasons why she has been guiding. Holding the necklace given to her by the guide she thought she loved, the narrator realizes, “Whatever role that man had played in taking me to the Alaskan wilderness in the first place, he had nothing to do with why I stayed, nothing to do with all the things my seasons with the hunters, with the animals, had taught me” (52). What the narrator learns is that she has the strength to survive on her own in the wilderness and that she is deeply attached to it: “I am a far better outdoorsperson for my years guiding hunters, and even more important I have a much deeper understanding of my animal self” (52). Her association with the wilderness can be seen as traditionally feminine, but it also stems from her accumulation of experiences in the wilderness. The narrator of “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals,” like the narrator in “Selway,” realizes that the adventures and experiences in nature that she craves have nothing to do with the men she associates with them. Though the men are influential in their lives, the narrators discover that they really have been seeking adventure for themselves all along. The traditional adventure convention of the protagonist needing to prove himself surfaces in the form of Houston’s narrators each proving herself to herself. This type of self-recognition shows not only a growth in the narrator’s sense of character, but also a growth in her individuality.
The overall effect of Houston’s manipulations of the adventure conventions is that she creates a cast of female protagonists who are able to actively participate in the tradition of literary adventure. Houston’s three short stories “Selway,” “The Moon Is a Woman’s First Husband,” and “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals” diverge from the traditional adventure conventions in similar ways, but create different effects. “Selway” is the story that most closely adheres to traditional conventions, while making enough adjustments to create a strong female protagonist. “The Moon Is a Woman’s First Husband” reads more like a story of friendship and bonding than a tale of life-threatening adventure. The risk of death is definitely present, but the focus of the story is on the dynamics between the characters. Finally, the action of “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals” tests the mental and physical strength of the protagonist. In this story, Houston most clearly redefines the traditional roles of the male and female.
Paul Zweig states in The Adventurer, “A story does not primarily require thoughtfulness or critical judgment form its audience; it requires self-abandonment, an act of depersonalization. To enter a story, one must give up being oneself for a while” (85). Reading Houston’s stories allows the reader to place himself or herself in the protagonist’s position. The more realistic the characters, the easier it is for readers to relate their own lives to the story, and therefore gain a new perspective through the adventures of the protagonist. By writing women into the once-closed genre of adventure, Houston is able to explore an entirely new realm of perspectives toward nature, individuality, and personal growth. Most of her divergence from traditional conventions occurs because of the female protagonist’s unique relationships to men and nature. Michael Nerlich claims that “women have begun a revision of the male preemption of adventure privileges, and ‘writing in the feminine’ is one of the greatest and most exciting aesthetic enterprises humanity has ever undertaken” (Green, Adventurous 148).
By “writing in the feminine,” Houston does not merely write out the masculine. In “Selway,” the male holds a role similar to that of the male in traditional adventure. As seen in “The Moon Is a Woman’s First Husband” and “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals,” males and females are given equivalent roles and strengths. All of the women in Houston’s stories are growing, thinking, intelligent individuals who realistically need to experience life in order to gain clearer perspectives of themselves. Houston’s work encourages both male and female readers to reassess their motivations for adventure and relationships.
Works Cited
Baym, Nina. Feminism and American Literary History: Essays. Rutgers University Press. New Brunswick, New Jersey. 1992.
Bulletproof Management. Press Release. “Pam Houston and Nerissa Nields.” Easthampton, Massachusetts. February 22, 2001.
Green, Martin. The Adventurous Male. Pennsylvania State University Press. University Park, Pennsylvania. 1993.
– – The Great American Adventure. Beacon Press, Boston. 1984.
Houston, Pam. “Selway.” Cowboys Are My Weakness. Washington Square Press. New York. 1992.
– – “The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals.” A Little More About Me. W.W. Norton and Company. New York. 1999.
– – “The Moon Is a Woman’s First Husband.” Waltzing the Cat. W.W. Norton and Company. New York. 1998.
Jespersen, Thora Christine. “Engendering Adventure: Men, Women and the American ‘Frontier’ 1880-1927.” Diss. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Oct.1997.
LaBastille, Anne. Women and Wilderness. Sierra Club Books. San Francisco, California. 1980.
Zweig, Paul. The Adventurer. Basic Books, Inc. New York.1974.
