Not Quite Persuaded

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer.  Riverhead.  456 pp. $28.00 ****

When I heard that Meg Wolitzer had written the first #MeToo novel, I figured that either the woman was prescient or just writes very quickly.  The Female Persuasion does open with a classic #MeToo moment: the protagonist, Greer Kadetsky, has only just gotten to Ryland College in Connecticut when she’s at some kind of mixer and a guy treats her roughly, grabbing her breast and trying to intimidate her.  She’d been drinking and had been there to meet people, which made her feel partly responsible.  But over a period of weeks she heard of more incidents concerning the same guy, and he faced disciplinary action, and finally made a kind of campus wide apology, which began, “I’d just like to say that I, Darren Scott Tinzler, class of 2007 . . . am apparently kind of bad at reading signals from the opposite sex.  I’m very ashamed right now, and I apologize for my own repeated misunderstandings of social cues.”

Bullshit!  The guy knew exactly what he was doing, he was doing it on purpose, trying to intimidate women and dominate them.  Greer had been vulnerable on that first occasion, but she wasn’t wrong or responsible in any way.  We’re hardly surprised when, years later, Darren Tinzler becomes an Internet Troll.

This brief moment in her freshman year gives Greer a question to ask a famous feminist, Faith Frank, who visited her campus to give a talk later in the fall; Greer’s friend Zee, an already-out lesbian and activist, drags her to the lecture.  It’s an electrifying moment for Greer, hearing the woman speak, asking a question from the floor, encountering her later in the Women’s Lounge; it is one of those moments that change a whole life.  The #MeToo aspect of the book soon retreats to the background.  The heart of this book is about the relationship between Faith and Greer, an older feminist and one who has just had the moment that awakened her.  It’s a classic story of two women engaged in a mentor-disciple relationship.  Meg Wolitzer, by the way she sets this meeting up, the way her whole book is structured, by the very title—talk about taking on a large subject—seems intent on telling this classic story.

Greer is actually furious that she’s at Ryland; she had gotten into Yale, but her inept and hapless dope-smoking hippie parents didn’t fill out the tuition aid form correctly (that was pretty much the way they’d lived their whole lives) so she couldn’t go.  Her boyfriend—a winning and interesting guy named Cory—also got into Yale, but chose Princeton, partly because he thought it would be too painful for his girlfriend to visit the place she might have gone.  The two of them were the two truly intelligent people from their high school.  They both deserved the Ivy League, but only Cory got there.

But the story focuses on the women.   Faith gives Greer good advice about the Darren Tinzler situation publicly, “You and your friends should definitely keep the conversation going,” but she also tells her later, privately, “It sounds like you already did what you could.  You made your point.  If you seem to be hounding this person, then sympathy will redound to him.”  She urges her to accept her college situation and make the most of it.  “A full scholarship is definitely huge.  Most women graduate from college with mountains of debt.”  In every situation, in fact, with younger women hanging on her every word, Faith gives what seems to me very good advice.  This is her life.  Giving the right advice.  Encouraging women and lighting a fire under them at the same time.

Faith’s problem has always been keeping the work going.  She spent much of her life with a magazine called Bloomer, a kind of poor woman’s Ms., but by the time Greer graduates from Ryland, the magazine has gone under.  A wealthy man from Faith’s past—a former lover, we eventually find out—helps her create a foundation to continue her work, and then her challenge becomes continuing to do important work while not being corrupted by wealth.  That becomes harder as she hits her sixties and begins to worry about security.

Greer in the meantime begins working for the foundation and slowly finds her vocation and her voice, Faith brings her and a number of other women along slowly, and they both run into the classic pitfalls of their situation: Greer’s friend Zee wants to work for the foundation too, but Greer would rather not have her there, and doesn’t help her out, in fact lies to her about the whole situation, and Faith eventually runs into a situation where her values are compromised, seriously compromised, and has to decide what to do.  The situation looks different for the sixty-year-old mentor and the much younger and more idealistic disciple.

What I really enjoyed about this novel was that, though Wolitzer was working with characters who verge on being stereotypes, Greer and Faith are both flesh and blood human beings, and I saw their points of view even when I thought what they were doing was wrong.  Wolitzer also gives full chapters to Cory and his family, and to Greer’s lesbian friend Zee; they’re lesser characters, but fully rounded as well.  Everybody has their moments, and there’s a terrible tragedy in the middle of this book that turns everybody’s world upside down.  Wolitzer doesn’t shy away from that either, even though it isn’t central to her story.

If anything bothered me, it was the way things eventually worked out for everyone in the end.  That can happen, of course, but the whole story seemed wrapped up too neatly.  Wolitzer has written an old-fashioned novel about a very contemporary subject.  She writes with warmth and generosity.  It’s not really a #MeToo novel, but it is an important book about subjects vital to women’s lives.  There’s plenty for men to learn from too.