Representation is Not Feminism

 “San Miguel” by T.C. Boyle, 2012

San Miguel is one of the Channel Islands off the coast of California, near Oxnard. It's now a National Park you can visit on a day cruise covered with nesting birds, hiking paths and constant wind. But before that it was for years a sheep farm. This is the story of two families trying to run that 'ranch' in the 1880-90s and again in the 1930s. It's really the story of 2 women and a girl who find the island either claustrophobic, dangerous and boring or an idol of pioneer life. It attempts to be a romantic location from Wuthering Heights but fails for two of them.

The first family, the Waters, consists of an adopted teenage girl, her mother and a stubborn husband, a veteran from the Civil War. The mother is an educated neurotic, a consumptive, used to city-life and a total misfit in the run-down, moldy and filthy ranch house left to them. The daughter wants to be on stage and is stifled by life on the island and later treated cruelly by her step-father. They both want out. The weather – by turns wet, windy, foggy, sunny, cold and unpredictable - is the worst kind of weather to cure a sick and weak consumptive. The husband took $10K of her money and bought into the sheep-farm, even though he's new to ranching. Everything is 8 hours away by the occasional boat – doctors, supplies, help, animals, other humans. They do have a young maid, which brings its own complications.

The second family years later, the Lesters, live in a better house on the island, as the first is left in ruins. They eventually have two young daughters whom they home-school. The woman, though citified, becomes an excellent cook and worker, while the husband is energetic, inventive and kind. He also is a veteran of the First World War. They still use a wood stove, a privy, oil lamps and don't have a radio and a generator until later. So they are called the “Swiss Family Lester” by the press, even though they live close to 'modern' California. Willa Cather seems to be their model. Eventually war, ranching and accidents catch up to this family too.

Why did Boyle write this story? This is his second one about the Channel Islands. The first was an environmental pissing match set in modern times called When the Killings Done (reviewed below). The only character that ties these two families together is a ranch hand, Jimmy, who we see go from a kid to an aging man. These are women's stories, and women dealing with men who have problems. Boyle usually writes tales of political and satirical import but here power devolves into representation only. Stories for stories sake. This one is based on two memoirs by both women, so you could say this is historical fiction with the usual dose of necessary imagination.  

Is this feminism?  I don't think so, as it stops at representation. "Telling Your Story" or "Being Invited Into the Conversation" - staples of NPR therapy-speak - do not concern power.  Feminism goes beyond invisibility issues to the question of women's power.  Revolutionary feminism, if you want to call it that, wants more than being interviewed or described.  All 3 women here were dragged out to San Miquel by their husbands or step-father.  Only the young girl ran away.

If you want to read modern 'pioneer' stories this might be it, where you can vicariously live through their experiences. If you want to read another of the millions of pro rata family stories or be depressed, this might be for you too. It's ultimately a sad book, as human life tends to go that way.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive using these terms: “When the Killings Done,” “The Harder They Come” and “Budding Prospects” (all three by Boyle) or the word 'feminism.'

The Cultural Marxist

In the Woods... May 28, 2024