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The "Different Truth" for Women in Sue Ellen Bridgers'Permanent Connections
Young adult literature offers many possibilities for readers of all backgrounds. By no means limited to the stories of growth and change ofadolescent characters, it also involves adult characters in the same strugglewith issues of esteem, identity, and independence. In PermanentConnections, Sue Ellen Bridgers focuses not only on the stories ofadolescents Rob and Ellery, but also on the stories of adults Coralee andGinny. Bridgers' fiction considers and discusses the interrelated lives of twowomen who are not the protagonists nor the adolescents, but who arenevertheless coming of age.
Erik Erikson describes adolescent coming of age as the time when life-historyintersects with history, when traditional stages of separation, individuation,autonomy, and freedom occur (Gilligan, Making Connections, p. 2). Yet,for women, adolescence encompasses more: it encompasses a different truth, atruth that involves complex sets of social interactions and personalrelationships. In that "different truth," Shea suggests, women come to think interms of the responsibilities of one person to another, unlike men who think interms of individual rights (p. 37).
In "In a Different Voice," psychologist Carol Gilligan bases women's differenttruth on the conception that the adolescent female's idea of self evolves fromthe exchange between the individual and the social world in which she lives andof which she tries to make sense (Kant's theory that knowledge is activelyconstructed rather than passively received). What women construct in theirsocial world and what is considered typical for their development is theirnotion of "good" -- "what pleases or helps others and is approved by them"(Gilligan, "Different Voice," p. 484). Gilligan later discovers that womenconstruct their own morality -- the moral woman is the one who helps others(whose goodness is service) and who meets obligations and responsibilities forothers, if possible without sacrificing herself ("Different Voice," p. 486)."Without sacrificing herself" is the key for what constitutes the central moralproblem for women struggling between compassion and autonomy, between virtueand power, between self and others. Thus, the ultimate "crisis of connections"for women becomes choosing between being good and being selfish (Gilligan,"Different Voice," p. 491).
Sue Ellen Bridger's two main characters in Permanent Connectionsrepresent this crisis of choosing. We are first introduced to the good woman,Coralee Dickson, gray-headed, sixty, and fearful. She has agoraphobia, a fearof open spaces, and has not been out of the house for three years. Her brotherFairlee describes Coralee as someone who "never wanted to get a job oranything; she never was real smart at school; and she seemed happier followingMama around the house and helping her" (p. 85). Later, Ginny Collier isintroduced as the selfish woman. Ginny, redheaded, freckled, and forty, isnewly divorced and has recently built a home in the mountains of North Carolinawith her seventeen-year-old daughter, Ellery.
For Coralee and other women like her, such male conclusions, as that of herbrother Fairlee, contribute to their perception that they have no choice,"correspondingly excusing them from the responsibility that decision entails,"making them "childlike in the vulnerability of their dependence . . . "Gilligan, "Different Voice," p. 487). Coralee's character reveals her childlikeinsecurity. In addition to Fairlee's comments that she "followed" Mama aroundlike a child (p. 85), her sister Rosalie remarks that Coralee never could takecare of anything (p. 147) and now couldn't even be coaxed out into her own yard(p. 236); and Coralee concedes that everybody, except Mama, treated her like ababy (p. 104). Even friend Ginny's initial perception of Coralee is like "achild in a communion dress" (p. 99). Gilligan points out that young women oftensee an "opposition between self and other, tied in the end to dependence onothers and equated with responsibility to care for them" (Shea, p. 39).
What Coralee becomes then is a caretaker. The "caretaker" is a role women oftenchoose or have chosen for them: they become responsible for the entire worldbut not for leading their own lives. They allow their life to be shaped byother people's claims and consequently cannot separate themselves from those intheir care, having an unclear sense of self (Beatty, p. 2). With an unclearsense of self, it is easy for Coralee to give in to the patriarchal-ordainedboundaries for women where caretaking seems a natural avocation. She becomesthe one, then, who stays home to take care of Papa after her mother died,unlike her siblings, Fairlee and Davis and even Rosalie, who make their wayinto the world.
Coralee represents the typical caretaker of any culture, a good woman and agood Christian. In Western culture, this "selfless" position has been enhancedwith idealized images of mothers (Gilligan, Making Connections, p. 318).In Coralee's case, this translates into imitating her mother and, like herMama, into being controlled by the family and their needs, in particular to menand their needs. As Mama "waited on him [Pa] hand and foot" (p. 117), so doesCoralee. Women often give to men and children until they are angry or exhaustedor emptied of everything. Ginny first notices the way Coralee's caretaking hasemptied her. Ginny sees ". . . the way she stood now holding the tray ofglasses as if it were a gigantic burden tugging her out of herself, sapping allher energy" (p. 117). Coralee follows this with her wish about her caretaking:"I just thought I'd reach the time when I didn't have to take care of nothingbut me . . . I want that feeling one day before I die" (p. 117). With theexception of her agoraphobia, what we see in Coralee then is the typicaladolescent progression from the egocentrism of a child, through theconventional goodness of a girl, to thinking about achieving the autonomy of anadult (Gilligan, p. 317).
As the novel unfolds, Ginny has achieved the autonomy of an adult: heradulthood is newly found; and, in many ways, she is still unsure of herself andstill troubled. Our first indication that Ginny is barely out of adolescence(like her daughter, Ellery) is when she confuses her life with Ellery's life:Ginny "couldn't distinguish the child from the mother, as if she were livingher young life again in Ellery" (p. 72). Later Ginny tells Ellery, "Maybe we'reactually the same age and I just look older" (p. 89).
But Ginny is not only older but also wiser. She has "finished doing her dutyand taking care of things she hadn't chosen herself" (p. 63) when she gave upthe life of a banker's wife and moved to the mountains. Yet just yesterday shewas a child, like Cora: she didn't make her own decisions "until [she] ... wasalmost 40" (p. 198) and went "from cleaning my room at home to cleaning adormitory room to keeping house" (p. 198). Now, as she operates her loom andweaves her life, she's trying to do what she needs for herself and learning to"live with what [she's] made" (p. 73).
Curiously, doing what Ginny needs for herself and living with the life she'smade causes problems for her daughter Ellery. Ellery blames Ginny for the lossof her old life and challenges' Ginny's right to choose her own life. She tellsGinny that she's always thinking about herself. Ginny responds that perhaps sheis, perhaps she's being selfish -- the ultimate sin for women (p. 91). Gilligandescribes "the judgment of selfishness and the morality of self-sacrifice"(Shea, p. 40) as a struggle to develop a positive sense of self and not torelinquish that struggle in an effort to please others or to avoid hurting them(in this case, Ginny sacrificing her life for Ellery's sake). Women feel thatthey must choose either to be "good" (that is, to choose self-denial not tohurt others) or to be selfish (that is, to hurt others by choosing to beselfish).
It is significant that Ginny's struggle to develop a sense of self-worth andaccomplishment grows as she chooses her self in relationship with Ellery and asshe chooses connection in relationship with Coralee. "Gilligan has found in herwork with adolescents that girls tend to see `a world comprised ofrelationships rather than of people standing alone, a world that coheresthrough human connection' " (Shea, p. 38). Indeed, what women do when they aresuppressed, oppressed, and repressed is to form interesting networks of supportamong themselves. They turn to each other because men are unwilling to providethe support and encouragement they need. Creating a network of "connections" isGinny's means of survival as she searches for both independence and friendship.It is the connection between Ginny and Coralee that helps each to succeed andhelps each to define themselves as women. As women, they are the same: "thedemons that devour women are all the same" (pp. 91-92).
The demons that devoured Coralee began when she lost her only connection, hermother. Eventually, Coralee went deep inside herself, regressing to a child'sfear, "the worst kind of thing to be afraid of . . . something in your head"(p. 87). When she lost her mother, she lost the connection that had valued her."Mama needed me . . . Mama always respected the kind of help [I] was to her"(p. 104). Ginny replaces that lost connection. Ginny values Coralee as afriend. As she sits in her mother's chair and asks Coralee to help her, sherepresents the connection Coralee needs to conquer her phobia.
A central event in the novel is when Coralee overcomes her fear of open spacesand walks outside. This re-entry into the outside world marks a triumph notonly for Coralee but also for Ginny. Both were "afraid to live"; both had to"stay safe" (Coralee inside the house and Ginny inside a marriage). Both hadchosen security (a female-defined value) over self (a male-defined value) untilthey came to realize that no one can open the door to self-realization butthem. With Ginny's support, Coralee goes "outside" literally and figuratively.In Carol Gilligan's terms, "she has found a way to develop her independent selfyet sustain connections; she has exchanged dependence for interdependence"(Shea, p. 39). In a connection that eliminates loneliness and isolation, Ginnyand Coralee support, encourage, and nourish each other. Aptly, their livesmirror the lives of all around them as "permanent connections" take place forprotagonists and families alike as they discover "their connection to life" (p.249).
The novel Permanent Connections extends the young adult genre as itaffirms the bonds of family and community connections and of shared humanexperience. Both adult and adolescent characters alike come to terms withchange, an inevitable reality in their lives, and with alienation, aninescapable phenomenon in modern times. In spite of different definitions ofalienation for adolescents and women in this novel, the substance is the same-- alienation as a result of cultural oppressions, of conflicts betweenthemselves, and of confrontations with their selves.
As Coralee and Ginny confront themselves, they discover that their womanhood,with its morality of caring, has grown and expanded to include themselves aswell as others. They come to realize that including their selves does not implyintolerance, immorality, or selfishness. It does not mean responsibility on onehand and irresponsibility on the other. What it does mean is that they canfinally count themselves on the list of "others" whose needs should beconsidered. It means that they can accept responsibility for their own feelingsand actions. It means that they can take back their lives from being controlledby others. And it means that they can come to claim ownership of their lives,disentangling their caring from the contextual constraints that confuse theirideas and stop their progress (Gilligan, "Different Voice," p. 511).
In the end, Bridgers' novel declares women's dilemma as no longer a conflictbetween duty and self-fulfillment. The morality of care that had once upon atime been detrimental to Ginny's and Coralee's lives has now been expanded toinclude them. With this inclusion, Ginny and Coralee now see what is possiblein their lives by choosing their own morality and creating their own reality.
Works Cited
Beattie, Melody. Codependent No More. Harper, 1987.
Bridgers, Sue Ellen. Permanent Connections. Harper, 1988.
Gilligan, Carol, Nona P. Lyons, and Trudy J. Hanmer, eds. MakingConnections. Willard, 1989.
Karen Mitchell teaches English at Boardman High School (Ohio).
