The Company of Women, by Mary Gordon
Read in November 2012
Two Stars
This 1980 novel tells the story of Felicitas Taylor, whose widowed mother is among a group of New York City five women in the thrall of a conversative Roman Catholic priest named Father Cyprian. The women, all single or widowed, form the company of women who raise the young girl. Overseeing them is Cyprian, who left his order following the Vatican II liberalization and eventually retreats to the rural town in upstate New York where he was born and raised. The story opens in 1963, when Felicitas is fourteen, and depicts her importance to the women and man who surround: She is their last best hope, Cyprian tells them. Felicitas is smart, perhaps even gifted, but socially isolated from people her own age and the mainstream of American life. She spends her summers at the priest’s compound, and although she knows the kids at her school in the outer borough where she lives, they don’t interact, and she has no friends. The story then shifts to 1969, and Felicitas is attending a small Catholic college, majoring in classics and reading Latin and Greek. Her relationship with Cyprian is tense because she speaks her mind and has turned against the Vietnam war, which he supports. She is so anti-war that she secretly attends a march on the Pentagon. However,not long after the classics program at her college is curtailed, and she decides — against the wishes of all of the adults involved in her life — to transfer to Columbia. At Columbia, Felicitas falls under the spell of a political science professor named Robert, a shallow man who spouts all the radical bullshit of the day, and quickly becomes his lover and soon after moves into the apartment he shares with two women who were also once his lovers. The love affair soon falters because of Felictas’ obsession with her lover, who espouses free love and urges her to sleep with one of the louts who lives downstairs. Felicitas complies and not long after discovers she’s pregnant. After scraping together the money for an abortion — which was illegal at the time — she runs out of the clinic at the last moment and goes home to her mother. The story then shifts to 1977. Felicitas and her daughter are living in a house her mother built in Cyprian’s compound in upstate New York. All the other women have also moved upstate, and they’ve now formed a new company of women to raise Felicitas’ daughter, Linda. Cyprian is dying of heart failure, and Felicitas is about to marry a nice local man — silent and wise but not smart, she says — who can be a father to her child.
This is a dreary book, despite the pot-boiling plot. Felicitas is an unbelievable and unsatisfying character. As a devout Roman Catholic woman in 1969, she should have some misgivings — some thought, at minimum — about going to bed with the divorced Robert. Not a word. As a devout Roman Catholic woman in 1969, she should have severe misgivings about seeking an abortion. Not a word. As a highly-intelligent woman in 1969, she should notice that she’s left a patriarchal circle she found tyrannical and immediately joined another, albeit one that was not celibate. No notice mentioned. As a anti-war young American in 1969, she should have continued to at least note, and perhaps even protest, the continuing war. Not a word. As an American women living through the upheaval of the second wave of feminism, she should make some connections. Not even mentioned. While I can believe that there were women who were as sheltered as Felicitas is supposed to have been — even women growing up in New York City among single and widowed women who have worked for their livings for decades — I find it not believable that a highly intelligent woman attending one of the finest universities on the planet, one that was in turmoil — on strike! takeovers of administration offices! — would have failed to notice. For all of those reasons, I found Felicitas unbelievable as a character. And after reading this book, I have serious doubts that this author’s work actually deserves her reputation as a thoughtful and accomplished writer. In fact, I find myself very turned off by her and am unlikely to ever read anything else by her. Mary Gordon is well-known as Roman Catholic writer, and it is an insult to Roman Catholic women who struggled with sexuality and choice in those times to pretend that those conflicts didn’t exist.