Holden's Sexism
Throughout The Catcher In the Rye, Holden Caulfield confides in the reader/listener in a charming and friendly way. However, he is very ready to pass judgment on the people around him. His friends, family, and even complete strangers often come under Holden’s intense scrutiny over the course of the novel. For this reason, I found myself struggling to like Holden as a character as he himself is incredibly flawed yet has a "holier than thou" way of speaking. The most notable and jarring of Holden's flaws is his sexism. The way he describes and treats women throughout the novel was probably the most frustrating part of the novel. He interprets most of their actions based on sex and only seems to care about them when they are providing him something in return.
The first notable instance of Holden’s perception of women is possibly also the most telling. His experiences going on double dates with his roommate Stradlater paint a harrowing picture of dating at the time. Stradlater effectively date-rapes all of the girls he goes out with while Holden considers himself a paragon of virtue for stopping when they say no. Holden does appear to be more forward-thinking than Stradlater, however, he seems to not acknowledge the fault Stradlater holds for these occurrences and instead focuses on the ways women are susceptible to his roommate's “phoniness.” The only time he ever does anything about it is when he finds that Stradlater’s next date is his personal friend and crush. He makes seemingly futile attempts to make Jane seem like more than just a piece of meat to Stradlater.
He continues to hold this disturbing view of women throughout later chapters. For example, even when he was talking to Ernest Morrow's mother, he didn't hold back when commenting on her appearance. He even says, "She looked nice, smoking... She had quite a lot of sex appeal, too..." (Salinger 73). Additionally, when he was at the Lavender Room, when the three girls whom he danced with showed no interest in him, he described them as "ignorant" and based his opinion of them based on how attractive they were. Notable quotes used to describe the three girls include: "the two ugly ones", "You could hardly tell which was the stupidest of the three of them", and "do you think you could get an intelligent answer out of those three dopes"? (95-96). Holden continues to judge women harshly based on their appearance and seems to only value them for sex.
While Holden's misogyny is pretty apparent throughout the novel, I found this to be really ironic in comparison to his description of his sister Phoebe and even Jane Gallagher. With these two women, he seems to show a softer side, seeing Phoebe as incredibly intelligent and always looking forward to seeing her. To Jane, he takes more of a protective role, getting angry at Stradlater for seeing her as just another girl although he shares this view when it comes to other women. Despite these soft spots for Jane and Phoebe, from a wider perspective, Holden is very resentful of most women around him, considering them phonies and dumb. He ridicules them for expressing sexuality and refrains from blaming the men who do them wrong. Even though Holden seems perfectly capable of pointing out the flaws in others, he doesn't recognize that he holds some of these very flaws too.
I don't know if Holden necessarily "resents" the women around him. It was hard for me to empathize with Holden at first because of the way he talks about women. Although he has been conditioned to view women a certain way because of societal norms of the time he's grown up in, and the people he's surrounded by.The way he talks about women isn't a full reflection of who he is. It partly reflects his morals, it reflects his upbringing too. However, he has displayed a want to treat women better, only he is confused why he feels this way when "it isn't normal". This is another point where Holden is confused by the "phoniness" of the world (this isn't justification for how he acts though).
ReplyDeleteI think a big reason for why he acts this way is the society he grows up in. At the time, it seems it was quite normal to think of women this way, and Holden seems to have a relatively mild view compared to some of the other people he's around by stopping when the girl says no. I'm not justifying his actions or thoughts, but I just wanted to point this out because I think it's important to keep in mind the kind of atmosphere Holden grew up in and that he viewed this way of interacting with girls as normal.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually not sure that Holden sees himself as a "paragon of virtue" for "stopping" when a girl says no--ironically, he berates himself for "always stopping," not being as persistent as Stradlater, and basically apologizes to the reader for not being more of an entitled bro. This might be one of those moments where we see him holding himself to what we consider offensive or antiquated standards of behavior, and it's actually a good thing that he isn't a "proper" kind of boy in this context, like Stradlater. Stradlater's behavior seems obviously predatory and problematic to us, but no one would have even batted an eye in 1948: he's very much in the zone of "normal" or "expected" for an athletic and handsome young man in his position. Again, it reminds me of the heavily ironic moment in _Huckleberry Finn_ when Huck apologetically decides to "go to hell" in order to help an escaped slave, since every message in his pro-slavery white-supremacist society tells him that doing so is "wrong." Mark Twain, of course, wants the reader to see that Huck is in fact the moral character, and society's sense of "right" is wrong. I'd suggest something similar in terms of 1948 American society's ideas about "boys will be boys"--Holden is "wrong" in a way that might actually endear him to a contemporary reader. Even if he wishes he were more like Stradlater, we get the sense that he would hate himself even more if he were.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Holden is very sexist. I found it very ironic how Holden saw it as a bad thing that we stopped when girls said no and not as a good thing. He didn't seem to care that much that his friend was really awful to woman. He also seemed to think that all women were really into him, like in the hotel lobby. It was weird how he felt so entitled and everything.
ReplyDeleteGood post. I agree with your view on Holden's blatant sexism but I think this is a case of when the time period provides context. In the 40s and 50s, this type of behavior and attitude towards women was very common and while that definitely doesn't make it right, I think we can chalk up to the people he's surrounded by and the environment he's grown up in.
ReplyDeleteYou make a lot of good points here. Your three paragraphs outline well the three categorizations of women in Holden's mind that I took away from the book. Those are: good women, like Jane and Phoebe; women who are the targets of Holden's affection, like those mentioned in paragraph three; and women who aren't worthy of his attention, background women. It makes me quite unhappy that, as the book is narrated by Holden, he gets to have a lot of depth while the characters around him suffer, particularly women.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this a lot. I was also really bothered by the way that Holden talks about women throughout the book and I think the things that you said about how he treats different women different based on whether he views them sexually or not is definitely true and pretty upsetting. Holden is very critical of all of the people around them and basically none of them really get to speak for themselves but he seems particularly harsh on the women he interacts with.
ReplyDeleteYeah I feel like he has an inferiority complex that manifests in narcissistic behavior, especially toward women. Most women, save for Jane and Phoebe, are reduced to little more than sex objects. He seems to think himself as better than the other boys who are "phony" when he's not much different.
ReplyDeleteHolden only treats women he cares about in a good way and unfortunately I think that's more common than we realize in today's world. For example, in TV shows or movies when a boys mistreats a girl there's that saying of like, "what if that's your sister or mom" and the main character is usually stunned--given a reality check of their actions.
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